In pictures: potential partner in Fortaleza

StreetSmart Wheels Brazil

Written by

The StreetwiZe team

Posted on

July 14, 2023

The StreetSmart Wheels network in Latin America continues to grow! At the end of June, a promising potential partnership was explored in Brazil, the largest country in the region. Our friends at O Pequeño Nazareno are impatient to start using our StreetSmart tools, and we are thrilled to collaborate in providing more opportunities for the many street-connected children and adolescents in Fortaleza.

The organisation O Pequeño Nazareno has a clear vision and purpose: "Dignity and justice for children." The organisation began working towards this purpose 30 years ago under the leadership of their founder, Bernd Rosemeyer, and the vision hasn’t changed since then. That's why the organization aims to strengthen its street work program by using the mobile school and educational tools.

The city of Fortaleza - with a population of over two million inhabitants - is a major city with tourism as one of the primary sources of employment and income generation. However, in the city many families are being marginalized, leading to a large number of children living in extreme poverty. Additionally, the rising cost of living creates a significant gap for many families who are forced to live on the streets or in precarious housing made of affordable materials such as wood and plastic.

The street educators of O Pequeño Nazareno tirelessly work to build relationships with the children and their families.Besides this, they provide support in education and health, and they look for opportunities to strengthen the technical skills of their target group to prepare them for formal employment.

Despite the high rates of drug trafficking in the area, OPN persists in creating alliances with community leaders and strengthening family links. In this context, O Pequeño Nazareno sees StreetSmart Wheels as an opportunity to further enhance their street work and offer a variety of games and activities to the children.

During the week, our partnership coordinator Junieth Machado, facilitated several workshops to share the vision of StreetSmart with the OPN team and to showcase the educational tools developed by StreetSmart. Reflecting together on essential street work topics allowed the team to assess if our StreetSmart tools could add value to their work.

We want to thank the team of O Pequeño Nazareno for their fantastic work on the streets of Fortaleza and we’re looking forward to welcoming them to our partner network soon!