By Jennifer Sarah Frota

By the time we arrived at the Nossa Senhora da Apresentação neighborhood on Natal’s Northside there were already about fifteen kids, ages 5 to 16, who had spontaneously gathered and were waiting for us at the Matchbox, a tiny faded yellow one room building affectionately named for its size. Local artisans, mostly women in the neighborhood, use the Matchbox to organize craft fairs, sell their wares, attend workshops, and hold forums to discuss sanitation, drainage, and other neighborhood issues that arise, especially during the rainy season. The Matchbox is also a meeting point for local youth who play soccer and basketball in the court behind the building, and who - thanks to the initiative of Soraya and Sayonara Pinheiro - participate in workshops aimed at providing them with an alternative to risky pastimes that leave them vulnerable to violence and abuse. The neighborhood is home to 70,000 inhabitants who, if they're employed, make less than R$100 a month (US$50). Needless to say there is not one movie theater, not one community center other than the four walls and the roof of the Matchbox, not one park or rec center or public pool, and, aside from a wonderful group of capoeiristas who train on the court twice a week, no other organized youth activities for the 50,000 children and adolescents who attend the public schools four and a half hours a day.

Organizing activities at the Matchbox is the current President of the community council, Soraya Pinheiro Barbosa Lopes and her sister, visual artist Sayonara Pinheiro of the non-governmental organization, EDUC (Associação Para A Cooperação Educational). They have spent the last year organizing workshops in everything from percussion to theater, video, literacy, and the mural project, which our young participants proudly named, "Cidadão Comunitário." Together with the community, the sibling duo also organizes traditional celebrations including the lively Festa de São João (St. John’s Festival) and Cinema na Quadra (Movies on the Court) in which movies are shown once a month on a big screen under starry skies and among fireflies on the soccer/basketball court.

The first day I held a circle. We did theater games to develop an ensemble atmosphere as these projects are entirely collaborative. In the circle we said our names and favorite foods—a simple mnemonic device, which turned out not to be so simple when working with a population where food is scarce and so that to identify with a ‘favorite’ food is a kind of absurd luxury. The bewilderment on their faces made it clear and I thought of changing the ‘favorite thing’ to activity, but then we were already in the middle of something and I realized they were giving me a break and playing along, thinking it was some foreign thing because I was obviously a foreigner, though they couldn’t quite peg where I was from, perhaps Portugal.  Read More...