Making connections of peace and love:
When I decided to start the annual Yoram Kaufmann Memorial Humanitarian Project, it was with the bringing of 500 new pair of sneakers and shoes to Brazil. How I found Santa Clara is an interesting series of events. I met a wonderful photographer and reporter by the name of Caryn Davis. We met when she interviewed me to write an article for INK magazine, here in Connecticut ,on The International Peace Belt. I mentioned to Caryn that I wanted to bring shoes down to children in Brazil when I went in August to bring The International Peace Belt. Caryn put me in touch with her friends, Richard and Margot Calder, who run a non profit called BRAYCE. (For more information on BRAYCE please visit their website at www.brayce.org) Richard and Margot put me in contact with Nanko, who is part of an NGO that has been operating in Rio for the past thirty years by the name of Ibyss. Nanko, who is originally from Holland, recently was awarded the Peace Prize from Holland, and has been part of incredible humanitarian work in Brazil. Santa Clara is just one of over 70 projects they have started in Rio. Richard and Margot had two of the Brazilian teenagers here for the summer, through BRAYCE, bring down two large bags on wheels when they returned home to Brazil in July. I brought the rest of the shoes down to Brazil with me. After American Airlines lost the bags of shoes…twice! Sold my airplane ticket from Miami to San Paulo (which delayed my arrival by an entire day), and Brazilian customs almost confiscated all of the shoes upon my arrival, (detaining me at customs for six hours, after having not slept for two nights) , I finally arrived at the airport in Rio. This after a 46 hour trip. Needless to say, I was thilled to see my son, Jesse, at the airport! We took a taxi to our hotel, slept a few hours, and met Nanko, who picked us up in the lobby of our hotel, to take us to Santa Clara. This was certainly not the way I was hoping to begin my Brazilian trip, but, once we arrived at Santa Clara, it all made sense. I was so, so grateful to have brought the shoes, seeing the excitement it caused in the children’s faces. Pure joy…..
And so began my love of the adults, and children of Santa Clara…
In mid August when my son, Jesse, Nanko, and I arrived the sight of this amazing home, known as a “substitute family”, not an orphanage, was totally unexpected. Nestled among trees, on a beautiful road in the hills, children came out to greet us. Nanko drove us from Copacabana to Santa Clara and introduced us to this truly remarkable, and huge, family. Eliete and Cicero, the parents to over 1500 children in the past 22 years, are nothing less than remarkable. After leaving, it is the children who are deep in my thoughts, memories, and dreams. It is my hope that through my foundation we can start an education fund to help educate these children. Somehow, with the help of so many people, the children are able to complete high school and college. I would like to start a fund that would make it just a little easier for Eliete and Cicero, if only to begin with the educational expenses of a few children. The cost of high school is $900 a year for each child. I would like to begin by having 50 people pledge $10. a month to our educational fund. If we can reach that modest goal we would be able to raise enough money to pay the educational expenses of at least 6 children a year. To pledge you can contact us through our website and send a check to Artists for World Peace at P.O Box 95 in Middletown, CT. 06457. You can pay by the month, or once a year. We will post the ages of the children we are helping, along with their photos. These children will become part of our “Children of Peace” project, and together with our friends from around the world, we can help make their futures a little brighter, while letting them know they have many friends who care about them and their future!
From Santa Clara website.
To read all about them please visit their website at: www.familiasantaclara.org.br
Who we are
Who we are
A family.
A family just like yours.
That is, almost like yours,
just a bit bigger.
We are a BIG family.
The Santa Clara Family project is the realization of a dream of constructing a big family, a family that substitutes cold, impersonal shelters, broken homes and despotic institutions that lack focus on education and personal realization.
That’s what we are: a big family that opens up to children, teen-agers and young people that society has abandoned. A family that
embraces and takes in who has been sent to the streets, either by the government or by exclusion.
The Santa Clara Family is a real family, with a normal family routine, in a house that is very big but otherwise normal, in a place where the gates are always open to life and where help, education and love are fundamental.
A nuclear family – father, mother, biological children – living every moment with the children who, for whatever reason, join our family. We watch over and take care of each one as an individual, creating strong ties, building dreams and fighting to attain them, with equal opportunity and strength to change the future, essential factors for the emotional restructuring, recovery of hope and elevation of self-esteem.
Our daily routine is built on education. In addition to formal schooling, our children, adolescents and young people participate in several workshops: library, reading and writing, agriculture, sewing, arts and crafts, computation, music, percussion, dance, capoeira, and physical education, including football and volleyball.
The Santa Clara Family Project: An act of faith and courage
Santa Clara is a family that seeks to recover children and young people from the damage that life has caused them, preparing them for re-insertion into society as conscientious, participative, and peaceful citizens. It is our contribution for a better society, where children have their rights guaranteed and a
fair opportunity to grow.
The family within the community
Our family also embraces the community into which we are inserted: LIVE and COOPERATE, EXCHANGE and SHARE, TEACH and LEARN.
Our doors are also open to the community, which makes of our house a space that complements the school, participating in the workshops, complete with a nutritious lunch and snack, a bath, a trip to school and back, together with the children of the family.
This movement amplifies the individual universe and opens the way to the development of a conscience, the construction of the ideals of citizenship in all the children and young people involved. Who receives help must also help others.
Estrada do Mucuíba , 800 – Vargem Grande – Rio de Janeiro – CEP: 22785-150 – Telefones: 2428-1191 / 2428-2233 (Fax) / 9361-6466
I am extremely grateful to the following people, who generously helped to make our 2009 “500 Shoe Drive” to Brazil a huge success:
Loretta Spencer, Jessica Grant, Ellen Klimas, Barbara Johnson, Christina Upton, Barbara Salvatore, Katie Clay, Max Wareham, Robert Nasta, Jesse Nasta, Richard and Margot Calder, Dena, Aaron, and Lia Rosenbloom