Drug Rehabilitation Programme (Salvador, Brazil)

We support a drug rehabilitation programme for street children in Salvador, alongside a prevention programme to help children avoid drugs.

Many children around Salvador are driven to the streets by poverty, abuse and neglect.  Here they are highly vulnerable to being targeted by the drug gangs which are pervasive throughout Brazil's major cities.

Street children are particularly susceptible to falling prey to the lures of drug dealers in an attempt to numb their pain and hunger, and it only takes a couple of pipes of crack cocaine before they become addicted.

Rehabilitation programme

Sadly, due to a lack of funding, our partner has had to close their rehabilition centre.

However, we continue to support those who have been through the rehabilitation centre through our mentoring programme.  The mentors help the young people re-enter education, find vocational training or set up their own business.  They will continue to support their young people and help them rebuild their lives until the youth decides that they no longer need their support.

School workshops

Young people from our rehabilitation programme visit local schools where they run workshops to raise awareness about the dangers of drug abuse, sexual health and other relevant subjects.  Through this programme, we can help educate the next generation and hopefully prevent more children from running to the streets and becoming addicted to drugs.

We also run dance and theatre workshops through these local schools to provide vulnerable children with alternative psycho-social activities and, through their performances, reinforce the message of the dangers of drug abuse to even more children.

As teachers are often not trained on how to deal with a student showing signs of drug use, many of these children are immediately expelled and given no further support.  We are training school prevention committees to engage with and assist children struggling with drugs, to give these children a better chance of recovering from their addiction.

• Capital
• Brasilia
• Languages
• Portuguese
• Government
• Federal presidential constitutional republic
• Area
• 3,287,597 sq mi
• Population
• 192,376,496
• GDP
• £1,461 billion
• Per capita
• £7,449