PROJECT LIFE WITH HOPE
Hope Baptist Church (IBE) acts as a community of faith since the year 2005, in Salvador Bahia - Brazil, and our approach with the people of the district Pituaçu, showed us that the challenge of spreading the good news was much bigger than we thought. With the development of our coexistence with our neighbors, we learned that Grace releases spiritual energy to be directed to the next in search of God’s kingdom and his justice.
Worldwide, more than a billion people - roughly one sixth of the world’s population - still suffer from malnutrition, according to an annual report released by the United Nations. (UN, 2009). In Brazil, the situation is also worrying, despite the Global Hunger Index, a research unit of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which states that Brazil is among the countries that had an improvement in malnutrition levels since1990.
As in the main Brazilian cities, the city of Salvador faces a number of social and economic problems, among them, the situation of food insecurity and nutritional status of its population. Salvador is the darkest capital in the country (62% Black), The food and nutrition insecurity is also a race issue.: it reached 40% of households with residents of black or mulatto and 23% of households with white inhabitants (IBGE, 2007).
In our church’s neighborhood, we see people who are hungry and do not have the basic needs for human survival: physical and mental health, clothing, housing, hygiene, job training, employment and income. As indicators of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics reveal: in religion, 8% are evangelicals. On income, 27% of the population has monthly income of up to two minimum wages (U.S. $ 84 to $ 168) and 36% had no fixed income (IBGE, 2000), living everyday with a great hunger and malnutrition in protein-calorie various levels.
Currently the Brazilian children live in a time of nutritional transition between malnutrition and obesity. Chronic malnutrition in childhood is one of the biggest health problems faced by developing countries, and and was the cause for the child growth retardation. It expressed the problems of intensity and duration of starvation.. Being associated with impaired psychomotor development, reduced school performance, reduced productive capacity in adulthood, may present greater risk of contracting chronic diseases. Thus it triples the risk of death in children diagnosed with chronic malnutrition (PNDS 1996), leading to global health network to consider the importance of malnutrition as the millennium development goal in 2000 by the United Nations in order to reduce to half the prevalence of nutritional deficits in children younger than five years (The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007. New York, 2007). Thus, in the words of Gabriela Mistral, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature (1945) highlights the child as the most important focus of this community:
“We are guilty of many errors and many faults but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Now is the time their bones are forming and their senses are being developed. For him, we can not answer “Tomorrow”, his name is today “
As the hunger for justice is the harbinger of the dawn of the Kingdom of God, Project Life with Hope appears as communal expression, With the primary objective being the reduction of mortality of children in the neighborhood of Pituaçu through the recovery of nutritional status of malnourished children , the training of parents in the labor market, and investment in continuing education in health and sanitation.
Telling the story of Project Life expectancy in these four years of existence is to narrate the trajectory of every 85 children diagnosed with chronic malnutrition, aged between 6 - 60 months of age. We have achieved results through the volunteers who attend weekly multidisciplinary meetings: 91% recovered from their nutritional status and 9% had changed address.
Among those impacted by PROJECT LIFE WITH HOPE is Esther (name changed to protect identity). Esther became a symbol of resilience among us, just as her namesake who saved the lives of many. Esther’s life was hanging by a thread. She came into the project December 4, 2006, when she was just three years old. Esther was diagnosed with grave malnutrition. She consumed only 30% of the basic nutritional needs of a child her age. This was just one of the ills that affected the fragile life of Esther: she and her parents are HIV positive.
Esther is still alive and has since recovered from the malnutrition. She is also assited by a reference service and has the ability to smile and keep hope..
Esther’s family is a member of IBE. Esther plays today, smiles a lot and runs through the gardens of the church holding hands with her friend Natalia. If Esther was not saved from malnutrition,she would have died before having the opportunity to make friends with children like Natalia. Among them are opposing worlds and separations that, were it not for the Project, these two children would not be together. Natalia has white skin, consumes the recommended daily nutritional needs, is healthy, studies in an excellent school and lives with a family of high economic standards of consumption. She walks hand in hand with Esther, HIV positive, African decent which erased her from the law. She does not get a decent education, health services, nutriton, leisure and housing. Without the Project, there would not be a cahnce for children who bear the label of social grouping to construct a beautiful friendship?
This is the greatest fruit of Life With Hope Project, which has on its waiting list, other
children like Esther who depend exclusively on personal donations, support, encouragement and prayers for more than save lives: to enable families to the job market
the practice of integral mission of the church.