Viva a Vida

Viva a Vida supports substance-abusing street children in the city of Salvador, northeast Brazil, helping them to understand and address their addiction as well as to gain the educational tools and professional skills necessary to build productive lives for themselves.

Up until October 2009, Viva a Vida ran the only residential treatment programme in the entire region specifically working with children and adolescents.  Due to funding cuts, this programme had to close.  However, Viva a Vida continues to run an aftercare support and mentoring service for all those boys who went through the programme.  It also runs a Prevention Project whereby some of the boys from the rehab program as well as young people from the local community are trained to be peer educators to facilitate HIV/AIDS and substance abuse prevention workshops in schools and community organisations.

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