(by Emanuele Riccardi).
Smiles and children
singing and dancing Capoeira can be seen on the roof of the
brightly colored Ação Social Padre Anchieta (ASAP) daycare
center in the Rocinha favela, the largest in this city and only
a few kilometers from the Olympic sites.
Motorcycles race through the lively main street of the area
full of small, makeshift shops and a spider's web of hundreds of
high-voltage cables go in all directions.
There is not just the ''glamorous'' side to sport of the
Olympics on television and in magazines, there are also the
humanitarian and social sides, the head of the Italian National
Olympic Committee (CONI) Giovanni Malagò, noted on Wednesday.
Malagò was speaking in Rocinha at the inauguration of an
joint initiative by CONI and ActionAid (an international
non-governmental organization whose primary aim is to work
against poverty and injustice worldwide) to improve the living
conditions in the favelas. It is called 'Olympic Legacy'.
The first project that is part of it focuses on
improvements of a building in which one of the local daycare
centers is housed.
CONI and ActionAid renovated the toy library, the
classrooms and the open-air dance area that includes a small
educational garden to teach balanced diets and fight obesity and
malnutrition.
On Thursday the second project will be inaugurated in
Cidade de Deus: a small playing field that has been renovated
and that is part of the local Alphonsus de Guimaraes school,
which 600 children attend and where football lessons are
offered.
''Sport is not only on television, when the spotlight is
on,'' Malagò said. ''We wanted to bring the positive values
found in sport everywhere. I am very happy to be here in the
favelas. This is a project we care a great deal about''.
The daycare center takes in over 100 children every day to
enable their mothers to work. It has existed for years and
struggles with both financial problems and issues with the
central government, which ''to grant us official authorization
demands a great deal of us but gives us little'' in return,
Father Thierry said.
The Belgian Jesuit priest has been in Rocinha for 40 years
and runs the center alongside Josè Martins de Oliveira, head of
Rocinha Sem Fronteras, which fights for the rights of the favela
that counts approximately 150,000 inhabitants.
Some of the most recent battles include one against a
proposal for a 700-million-reais (over 200 million euros)
cableway, which would have been too expensive and not as urgent
as other priorities, such as cleaning up the sewer system - even
though this ''won't attract as many tourists''.
Father Thierry, youthful and active despite being 72 years
old, noted that Rocinha's biggest problems are drugs and teenage
mothers, who without such facilities as those provided by ASAP
would not be able to go to work or would have to lock their
children up at home the entire day.
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