vida com esperanca .org

Here is the world map of visitors who have visited us this year.  We are so very grateful for your interest in our project !  THANK YOU SINCERELY !

photostream from vida com esperanca on Vimeo.

Thank you for your interest in our project.  You are part of a growing wave of people, New York Times writer, Nicholas D. Kristof says are forming the “Age of Ambition” in his Op-Ed column on Sunday, January 27, 2008.  (read the full article here).

“In the ’60s, perhaps the most remarkable people were the civil rights workers and antiwar protesters who started movements that transformed the country. In the 1980s, the most fascinating people were entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who started companies and ended up revolutionizing the way we use technology.  Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways.”

We want to share our Life with Hope Christmas party with you.  It was a  wonderful time!

Every morning on my way to work I see a wonderful view. I see God’s world. In its splendor, I find strength to move on to the next plateau. I see men and women on the sidewalk and my pleasure in this way is to look at the difference between the destination and the journey. I look at each face and think about their lives and the hell they experienced at their last moments. One of them is a fisherman that is always striving to make something better. He walks very slow from one end to the other, with a huge smile on his face. He looks at the ocean, to try to see things unseen, and the evidence of them. He only has a pole to fish but his heart is full of hope.  In the same context God put in my heart that I was to find Emily’s family and I’ll never forget the first day that I met her. Emily, 2.9 years old, 20 pounds and 0.34 in and she could hardly laughing. I missed her smile and laughter but I realize though, that I’m lucky. All I had was a pole to fish but our hearts was full of hope and I could share with her family one on one what I believed because I knew that there would be another opportunity to make my life better.

Please enjoy these inspirational seminars provided by TED

Echoing the catchphrase, Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz asks, “How do you make poverty history?” She draws on her experiences financing businesses in Rwanda (microcredit), Tanzania (bed nets) and India (drip irrigation), to support her conviction that “People don’t want handouts: They want to make their own decisions, to solve their own problems.” Traditional aid doesn’t fit into this worldview. Novogratz advocates building viable systems with people on the ground to deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scalable.

How do other groups work together against hunger and malnourishment ? As part of our effort to increase awareness and support for our community, we seek to learn more about from other international relief efforts. We have established an RSS feed entitled “international relief and social entrepreneurship” which gathers news postings from across the globe. We have also started a blog carnival entitled “Social Entrepreneurship Today” where we, and others who care about solutions for poverty and social injustice can learn more. If you happen to come across an interesting blog, please post the address in a comment here and we will add it to our RSS feed and blog carnival sites. Thank you for participating !

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There are some words that keep a certain secret power in relation to expressing what one can take the best of our lives. Some of them, Beto Guedes (a Brazilian composer) expressed on his beautiful song, when he says, ‘everything that moves is sacred.’ These little and meaningful movements make sense to Davi’s so fragile life. Through his look, we observe a deaf and smooth movement to communicate and feel our God’s love.  Translating his life to story, his brief life, is remarkable, because of his family (who has had seven biological children) has adopted him.  His mother Crispina is a housewife and works hard to grow up her children.  His father Carlos only has a part time job and gets US$100 a month.  Nowadays Davi is the youngest of his family and he’s nine months and 0.6m tall. He weighs 3.4 kg. What is really important is that Davi, although has been abandoned, he’s loved by Crispina’s heart.  Actually, what calls my attention and makes us love him and be hopeful is Crispina’s love for him.  Her love spreads and makes us everyone loves him.  We have accepted little Davi in our life and in our project hope with life, with hopeness, we hosted this little life with our hands and heart full of compassion, feeding him to live full of hopeness.  This is the best place for little Davi.  Where there is love.

According to the World Health Organization, “malnutrition remains one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality among children throughout the world. Approximately 9% of children below 5 years of age suffer from wasting (weight-for-height below 2 standard deviations of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/WHO reference values) and are at risk of death or severe impairment of growth and psychological development.” A great deal of information and help is available for assessments and intervention. Our initial assessment strategy is guided by The World Health Organization Child Growth Standards. These standards were developed using data collected in the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study and are accompanied by documentation on how the physical growth curves and motor milestone windows of achievement were developed as well as application tools to support implementation of the standards.

We utilize these guidelines for rehydration and rehabilitative dietary management as well as for physical and psychological stimulation, care and affection, are of which are necessary rehabilitation in order to prevent retardation of growth and psychological development.

The impact of our intervention in terms of median hight, weight and BMI for boys and girls aged 61-228 months are measured using standard statistical tests with reference to the 1977 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/WHO reference which uses the original NCHS data set supplemented with data from the WHO child growth standards sample for under-fives.

Visit our Impact page for more information on the management of malnourishment.

In our effort to bring wider awareness and relief to the community we serve in Salvador, we search for inspiration and examples of how others seek change.  A great place to begin to understand how small groups of people can work together for social and economic improvement is the Ashoka website.  Ashoka is an organization, founded by Bill Drayton, a graduate of Harvard College and a former McKinsey consultant that was launched in Brazil in 1986 and has sponsored and nurtured more than 1,800 “social entrepreneurs”.   Ashoka fellows are working all across the globe to address rising inequality, fragile democratic participation, and accelerating environmental degradation demand.  Brazil currently has more than 230 Ashoka fellows such as Cybele Oliveira Amado who is working on new models of education, Dora Isabel do Araújo Andrade who has created a dance program coupled with a social service administration, and Raquel da Silva Barros who is working on rehabilitation with substance dependent mothers.  These are just a few shining examples of hope on the move throughout Brazil.  We seek to learn more to better achieve our mission.