Community work with children in Rio de Janeiro

We believe that travel can change lives! Travelling can change you as a person and, if done responsibly, can have a profound effect on the people that you meet and the places that you visit. We want as many people as possible to experience the heart and soul of another culture in the way that we have, and in doing so, help them to make a positive and lasting impact on our world.

Rio de Janeiro is commonly referred to as “A Cidade Maravilhosa” and the marvellous city really does live up to its name, not only during Carnival celebrations. With its fabulous beaches, the Maracanã stadium; one of the world’s largest football stadiums, its samba music and most importantly its marvellous people, it is an event in itself. However, Rio de Janeiro has a different side to it as well: one of poverty and violence. Those individuals most vulnerable and affected by the downsides to this ostensible paradise are the country’s little ones. In order to give at least some of these disadvantaged kids hope and the chance for a better future, we have teamed up with a local project striving to get them off the streets.

While volunteering on this project you will find that members of staff are overly dedicated, but resources are limited. Your ingenuity and initiative is needed to create extracurricular leisure activities and an enjoyable learning environment for the kids. It is this type of proactive approach that makes our volunteers so invaluable not only for the project as a whole, but for each individual child that gets the opportunity to learn, play and look into the future.

You’ll stay in a shared room in a locally owned guesthouse ensuring that you directly support the local community while you’re there. You’ll also be supported by your local in-country coordinator; Felipe who with his team is best placed to understand the specific economic, social and developmental needs of Brazil.

On average 48% of your placement fee is distributed in-country for the services included with your placement (i.e. Local support, Food, Transport & Accommodation) meaning that the local communities are directly benefiting from your travels to their country. The remaining funds are required to cover the administration costs associated with sourcing, training, marketing and coordinating your travel experience. We do not give a financial contribution to this or any of our projects as we believe that money is rarely the answer to complicated development issues; if it was, the poverty problems in the world would be getting better! Short-term aid relief can cause aid-reliance and financial instability and the corruption seen in many developing countries means the guarantee of your money going to the heart of the cause is massively reduced. From our experience (and by learning from our mistakes) projects benefit far greater more from a sustainable framework to ensure they develop rather than short-term financial aid relief.

If money is paid directly to projects then they may become dependent on that income. If that country or project becomes unpopular, or through restrictions in the opportunity to travel to that country, the money dries up and they are no longer able to continue with their work. Supplying projects with enthusiastic volunteers creates a constant supply of helpful hands and as they are not reliant on an income can continue without the assistance of the volunteer travellers, although significantly slower in achieving their goals.

Instead of giving money direct we operate a grants scheme from our Helping Hand Foundation. This is designed to allow all our partner projects to submit applications for funding to achieve a specific objective. In 2007 we have supported a number of partner projects including the installation of 20 toilets at a school in India, the construction of a community centre in Brazil and providing a radio communications unit for a turtle conservation project in Costa Rica.