Vol. 11 – Number 44 – 2020
COLUMN STAY INSIDE
Page 15-16
Special interviews
Taina Pessoa de Mendonça Veras¹
Lucas Fernando Tabata²
Mateus Rocha³
Dayane Oliveira³
In this edition, the Column “Stay Inside” receives Taina Pessoa from Mendonça Veras to talk in detail about the social project of the NGO Amigos da Estrutural / Formiguinhas da Alegria in face of the OVID-19 pandemic.
Lucas Tabata: Tell us how the NGO emerged?
Taina Pessoa: The NGO emerged from an informal meeting with 6 friends in 2016, who had already participated in other groups and who were not connected to any other social project at the time. Our social project has always focused on activities with children from poor communities in the Structural City (DF), and the mission of the project is to provide happy days to these children to alleviate the reality, often harsh, that they experience daily. Currently we have 200 volunteers and partners who help in various ways, from the organization of actions, fundraising, donations of food and materials, participation in monthly actions with the children and improvements to the infrastructure of daycare centers.
Lucas Tabata: How have the actions evolved over time?
Taina Pessoa: The first social actions were carried out with a little more than 14 children, in a day care center of a needy community in the Structural City, using the space and infrastructure they had. As mentioned, the NGO started with a group of 6 people who invited their friends to participate, and so we grew. Today, we continue basically as a large Group of Friends who like to help others. With the arrival of new members, new ideas were incorporated, being implemented whenever possible in the monthly social actions we carry out. One of these new ideas was the suspension of the distribution of candies, chocolates and sweets that we made in the actions. With the entrance of volunteers from the dental area, there was a reorientation in this direction, to try to reduce the incentive of sugar intake in the days of the NGO actions. Previously, all our actions were carried out inside our own daycare centers, and today we are able to provide tours to the children, so that they can visit other places, such as parks, the planetarium, the stadium, movie theaters, police and fire department battalion clubs. We noticed that in these walks, the exit from the reality in which they live provides more lightness and joy, besides allowing them to know new scenarios. Among the activities carried out, we brought material so that volunteers and children can play rope jumping, elastic jumping, bambolese, yellow jumping, burning game, soccer, old woman’s game, hide-and-seek, marbles, tug-of-war, and currently we are able to perform actions with 100 children.
¹ Volunteer for the NGO Amigos da Estrutural – Formiguinhas da Alegria, Brasilia, DF.
² Prof. of the Faculty of Health Sciences – UnB.
³ Professor of the Department of Restorative Dental Sciences – College of Dentistry – Univesity of Florida – Gainesville/FL/USA.
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