A refuge for children in the Fishermen’s Village

The Fishermen’s Village is a maze of houses and shacks built on stilts on the Casqueiro River in Cubatão, a Brazilian coastal city in the state of São Paulo

Children in Salvation Army t-shirts laugh together as a volunteer checks a clipboard

The Fishermen’s Village is a dark and scary labyrinth – a maze of houses and shacks built on stilts on the Casqueiro River in Cubatão, a Brazilian coastal city in the state of São Paulo. Several homes were built on land the villagers reclaimed from brackish waters by themselves. Some houses are already built of masonry, but there are still many wooden shacks. Five miles away from the Port of Santos, the Fishermen’s Village stands in close proximity to two of most important roadways connecting São Paulo, the 21-million-person megalopolis, to the coast.

Only 22 of the 645 municipalities in the state of São Paulo have a wealth distribution ratio worse than that of Cubatão. Seventeen thousand of the poorest of its citizens live in the Fishermen’s Village. More than a third of the heads of families there, male or female, do not have a formal job. Survival activities include crab fishing and the local informal trade as well as illegal activities such as trafficking drugs and people.

A place of refuge

On Middle Street (Rua Amaral Neto), there is a place of refuge for children, run by The Salvation Army. In the after-school programmes they engage in sports, arts, recreation and Christian education. One hundred and fifty school-age children find room to dream within the refuge’s walls.

Pamella, 26, who participated in the project from an early age, is now a Salvation Army lieutenant, not long out of training. Pamella shares with her husband responsibility for another social project about 400 miles from Cubatão, in a neighbouring state. She remembers: ‘They let us talk, read, put together plays. I received a lot of encouragement. They believed in me and my dreams when I could not believe in them myself.’

In 1990, Cristina Silva left her job in a hospital kitchen located near to Fishermen’s Village after being informed that, in her absence, her five-year-old son Pedro was being used to fetch orders from traffickers.

Eliana Nogueira, now a major in The Salvation Army, is Cristina’s sister. She says Cristina was very pleased when she was approached by Captain Margaret England with a simple idea: Cristina would receive the children of the village for activities on Sundays in her house. She lived in a stilt shack built on the mangrove which, after a few months, began to sink. Four mothers from the community, realising the importance of the initiative, offered their homes so the activities could continue.

The owner of a local bar, at the request of the neighbourhood association, offered space to the group. The bar became the meeting place during the day of a programme that was now held on other days of the week and serving a larger group of children. It reverted to a bar in the evenings.

The project received its own home, acquired by APROSES (a Portuguese acronym for the Social Assistance and Promotion of The Salvation Army), the sponsoring non-profit organisation responsible for all Salvation Army charity work in Brazil. The institution maintains the programmes to this day with a staff of ten employees.

In the neighbourhood on the other side of Highway BR050, a group of 80 adolescents participate in activities catered to that age group. The teens were encouraged to name their own programme. The name chosen was the New Social and Healthy Opportunities for Adolescents. In Portuguese the initials form the word NOSSA, which means ‘Ours’. This is significant because one of the major needs teens have in highly vulnerable circumstances is to belong to something bigger and better than their own assessments of self-worth.

Two boys play a board game — Photo: James Gilbert

Winning the respect of the community

Social programmes and pastoral work are coordinated by Majors Gustavo and Sílvia Santana. This couple took over the work in February of this year, replacing Majors Salvador and Esther Ferreira.

The projects have won the respect of the community, promoting dialogue with the leaders of Fishermen’s Village. The activities for adolescents, for instance, are making a difference in the wider community.

‘Brawls between the boys from the village and those from the neighbourhood on the other side of the highway are over,’ says Cristina. ‘This is because we relocated the teens to that neighbourhood and now they see each other everyday.’

Negotiating is important. In order to keep the peace, one must enter in conversation with neighbourhood leaders. Some of these may also be involved with drug trafficking and other illegal activities, so caution and divine protection are priorities.

The programmes are promoting strong friendships and support networks. Lieutenant Pamella says of the people she met through The Salvation Army’s ministry in Fishermen’s Village: ‘We’re still in touch. My class is very close, we are like brothers and sisters. We still keep in touch through WhatsApp, we schedule meetings, etc. From my time in the project we even have a couple, Nataly and Henry. They both grew up with us.’

Recognising victories

In its 29 years of presence in Cubatão, The Salvation Army has kept pastors (officers) living in the city and at the service of the community in Fishermen’s Village. They have invested in people like Cristina, and APROSES provides the supervision and continuous training of employees. This demonstrates a high level of institutional endurance.

Life is far from easy, but it takes commitment to hope. The leaders of the programmes in Fisherman’s Village choose to recognise the small wins in a highly afflicted environment. These wins are celebrated and shared, such as:

The successful heart surgery at five years of age without which Pamella could not have outlived childhood.
A good job as a boilermaker in a steel industry for Vinicius, now 25 years old.
Clayton’s performance in the college entrance exam (similar to SAT in the USA or A-levels in the UK) which earned him a full scholarship to an engineering college level programme two years ago.
A changed and safe path. Cristina’s son, Pedro, did not follow the drug trafficking path despite so much early exposure. He worked for four years on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea as a waiter and speaks several languages. Today, in his early 30s, he prepares to pursue a ministerial career in The Salvation Army along with his wife and son.

These are great victories for a group that has learned to value the small and daily manifestations of God’s love. Pamella remembers the Middle Street project she attended throughout her childhood and adolescence as a place of refuge. ‘It enabled me,’ she says, ‘to be a child in a safe place.’

She believes the formula is simple – it is to believe in the goodness of God and to be willing to be an agent of change wherever we are. The seeds of the kingdom of God, she explains, sprout in fertile ground – and fertile ground is an inner reality, a matter of the heart.

According to Pamella, growth happens every time a created being turns towards the Creator; success lies in reconciliation, not in the accumulation of wealth. And these principles generate hope for whoever practises them – even as they negotiate their daily walk through a scary labyrinth.

This article first appeared in the Portuguese language Christian magazine Ultimato [Ultimatum]. Elsie Gilbert and her husband, James, have been missionaries in Brazil for more than 20 years. They work through the agency Equip Inc and live in Viçosa, Minas Gerais, where they coordinate the network Mãos Dadas [Hands Together], of which The Salvation Army is an active partner