Recent accomplishments
We are proud of what we have accomplished since our founding in 1997. Each girl who passes through our doors represents not only her own future, but the future of her family and her community. Their success energizes and inspires all of us.
Bahia Street teachers and students celebrate the end of a successful school year.
In 2003, out of a pool of applicants that included 1,834 with social projects in Brazil alone, UNESCO selected Bahia Street as one of the top 30 social action groups in Brazil.
Since its inception, the Bahia Street Programme has:
- Educated over 100 girls, all of whom have continued on to high school (a remarkable achievement since most African-Brazilian girls from the shantytowns never begin high school).
- Provided tutoring support to help its former students pass university entrance exams. Fifteen Bahia Street graduates have entered university. Two students, Barbara (2008) and Daza (2010) have graduated with degrees in nutrition and journalism.
- Initiated a Nutrition and Health Project that provides two hot meals every day for the girls together with psychological counselling, as well as an integrated programme that incorporates health and healing in the Bahia Street academic programme.
- Developed an educational programme to prevent early pregnancy. Without Bahia Street, it is likely that a majority of the girls would have become pregnant by thirteen years of age or less.
- Begun an evening programme in 2010 to provide free university entrance exam preparation classes for up to 50 high school-aged girls and older women from the shantytowns.
