Brazil: Associação Evangélica Luterana de Caridade – AELCA

About the local hosting organization

AELCA - Associação Evangélica Luterana de Caridade - was founded in 1968 with the name “Casa Lares” and worked in a family house attending 15 children. Nowadays, it provides alternative education and social opportunities to more than 150 children aged between 0 and 14 years old who are under social risk and from poor families. AELCA assists and provides alternative education to little children (0-6 years old) with a program called “Educação Infantil” and to older children (7-14 years old) with a program called “Serviço de Apoio Sócio- Educativo”; it also offers meeting point and workshops for youngers aged from 15 years old. Many different activities and workshops are regularly organised depending on the age group, such as sports, dance, games, computer and language classes, social assistance and art project activities, with the objective of developing the psychological, affective, cognitive, social and spiritual system of the children.

Presentation of the programme

The volunteer will participate in the daily work of the project like the rest of the staff and he/she will be able to propose his/her own activitiy/es. He/she could prefer work with little children or the oldest ones, that will mean different activities for him/her to do. Some typical activities developed with the little children will be: assisting and taking care of the children in the basic activities, playing together (simple sports, music, dance…), do pedagogical games (story telling, drawing...) and trips and simple activities. Typical activities developed with the older ones: participate and help in the existing sports workshops, in particular soccer, help in the homework, create recreational activities and workshops (manual works, chess, percussion, games, music…), do English and informatics lessons or special events and trips.