Casa de Passagem (Transition House)
In the 1980s, Ana Vasconcelos noted that programs that claimed to work with street children really worked with street boys, so she created Casa de Passagem to serve street girls. For many years, the program worked on the streets of downtown Recife, but in the last several years, the program has come to focus on preventative work in Recife’s poorest favelas: Santo Amaro, Casa Amarela, Peixinho, and Campo Grande.
The Casa emphasized vocational training and citizenship education. It strives to provide the necessary tools survive in and contribute to Brasilian society.
Girls come to the program referred by their friends -- the Casa is happy that its “outreach workers” are its clients, because it means that they are happy with the program. On their first day, they come to a “Welcome House” where they tell their life stories to a team of professionals and come up with a plan for their lives. The girls know that the Casa is a professional training program, but the first years at the Casa don’t seem all that professional: they do theater, learn music, do crafts, and play many games. Activities happen before and after school.
When it is necessary, girls can ask for individual or group therapy. A dentist is on staff, as well as a nurse. The program wants to offer a doctor, but they have not found the money or a doctor willing to volunteer h/er services.
When a girl feels like she is ready, she can move on to the next stage: vocational training.
The Casa choses its subjects after a careful study of the Recife job market, which offers most jobs in tourism, culture, and fashion. Because there is a huge market for traditional dolls, sold to tourists or during Carnaval, girls learn how to make, dress, and market dolls. This training also serves as a preparation for fashion workshops.
The Casa says “fashion workshops,” and not sewing classes, because the girls learn everything about clothing, from imagining a fashion and buying the right cloth to marketing the product. As such, they can work in a clothing factory, but they will also be able to open their own fashion ateliers or work as a professional in a large company.
Local culture and resistance are an important part of this education. Students make dolls of Maria Bonita and Lampião, heroes of a failed 19th century revolution, and learn about how blacks resisted slavery and oppression. Fashions are often based on Brazilian or African native patterns, which builds cultural pride and teaches girls how to resist superficial, globalized culture.
Older girls have created a co-op which has contracts with various fashion houses and boutiques in the city, which teaches them about working life: deadlines, quality control, schedules, etc. They also visit fashion houses and meet the people who might be able to give them jobs in the future. The Casa also has a shop in Recife’s largest shopping center, where girls can learn about marketing, distribution, and administration. Girls also learn critical reasoning, business math, management, teamwork, and professional Portuguese. The Casa doesn’t want to train a new proletariat, but to create new relations of production.
Beyond its work with girls at risk of homelessness, the Casa also does community development work in four favelas. The project finds and fortifies community resources, from mothers’ groups to church groups. The Casa also works with the city to improve water and sewage systems, and teaches local NGOs how to raise funds.
The Casa also runs a “digital inclusion” project, a computer room in one of its community centers where girls learn about technology. The Casa is now training a team of girls to found and run an internet café.
Girls can also learn how to become community leaders. The Casa trains them to be peer educators in sexual education, personal relations, and human rights, and they return to their communities to teach their peers, younger children, and adults.
Casa de Passagem
Rua 13 de Maio 55
Santo Amaro, Recife, PE 50500-160
Brasil
55 81 423 3839
fax 3423 2930
www.casadepassagem.org.br
Contacto: Antônio Correa, Coordinador executivo
antonio@casadepassagem.org.br
