The girls who study at the Bahia Street School come from impoverished neighbourhoods of Salvador, Brazil where violence, sickness and death are a daily part of their lives. For young women born in these areas, their only choices of survival without education are prostitution or domestic service jobs.
In Brazil, maid jobs are close to slavery. Women are generally expected to live at the household of their employer at least six days a week and to work whenever needed during that entire time. For this they are paid about seventy five pounds or less each month. Maids are not allowed to take their children to work, and they cannot afford other childcare, so children are generally left alone in a room of a neighbour (where they are often abused and go hungry) or they live on the streets.
These children, trapped in a closed cycle, form the next generation of Brazil’s poor. Young women often become pregnant at eleven or twelve years of age. Since abortion is illegal in Brazil, many young women die as a result of illegal abortions.
Race and Gender in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Salvador is a city of about three million people, of whom 80% are African-Brazilian, nearly all living in the material misery of shantytowns. Throughout Brazil, African-Brazilian women earn 75% less money than white Brazilian men for the same work; 67% of African-Brazilian women work as domestic servants. The shantytowns themselves are vast ‘invasions’ (a local term) of self-constructed shacks along open sewers, infested with rats and cockroaches. Tuberculosis and other diseases are endemic. Drugs and small arms sales are major economies. Brazil has one of the highest homicide rates by non-military gunfire in the world.
African-Brazilians stay in school an average of two and a half years, with only 13.6% of African-Brazilians completing primary school and only 2.1% completing secondary school. Of those who are able to attend school, they are 50% more likely than white Brazilians to leave without learning to read. Public schools are underfunded and dangerous. Teachers are poorly educated and poorly paid. Such schools do not teach students academic skills. Education is one of the only avenues out of misery for these people and, sadly, it is not available.
Bahia Street: Making Education a Reality
What the girls of the Bahia Street Programme are trying to do is extremely difficult. Many aspects of their daily lives work against their ability to study, to be secure, or to have any feelings of self worth. While the Bahia Street School has become a strong community since its founding, the change it is trying to effect is a large one. Providing quality academic education is vital, but that education must also be in touch with the daily reality of these girls’ lives. The teachers at the Bahia Street School have created a curriculum that speaks directly to the practical everyday experiences of living in the shantytowns of Salvador. The Bahia Street teachers themselves achieved university educations against all the odds; they are role models and mentors who understand the challenges the girls at Bahia Street are facing and overcoming.
Bahia Street needs your help to break the cycle of poverty in the shantytowns. Please donate to the Bahia Street programme today.
