October 29, 2001
Texas Hunger Offering & volunteers connect playground with nutrition
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___Some may see no link between fighting hunger and landscaping a playground, but one Texas Baptist family had no trouble making the connection.
___They saw their work as a way of bringing joy and beauty to children who have known little of either and are hungry for both.
___Gwen Sherwood, former chairwoman of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission, and her family spent a week in Brazil planting flowers and repairing playground equipment for a school that serves some of the poorest children in Niteroi, across the bay north of Rio de Janiero.
REBECCA SHERWOOD of Dallas (above) is surrounded by students from the Sao Lorenco School in Niteroi, where gifts to the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger are helping 250 children live better and learn more. Sherwood was among Texas volunteers who recently worked to landscape a playground at the school, which serves some of the poorest children in Niteroi.
___The Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger helps provide hot meals for about 250 children, preschool through fifth grade, who attend the Sao Lorenso School, located on a steep hillside in Niteroi.
___"Most of the children are from what they call the favelas," Sherwood said, explaining that "favelas" are urban mountain communities characterized by intense poverty. "Some are homeless street children."
___Sherwood and her husband, Art, members of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, served with their son and daughter-in-law, Phil and Rebecca, and their daughter and son-in-law, Christa and Nathan Houser.
___They worked alongside longtime friend Nathan Porter of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco. Porter, world hunger consultant with the BGCT Christian Life Commission, grew up in Brazil and served as a translator on the mission trip.
___The Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger helps support the hunger relief and economic development efforts of Reencontro Educational and Social Ministries, a wide-ranging program sponsored by First Baptist Church of Niteroi.
___Reencontro ministers to residents of 40 favelas in Niteroi, which are among more than 600 favelas throughout metropolitan Rio de Janiero. Many of the families in these areas live on about $30 a month. They generally are the fortunate ones who have some kind of steady income and shelter, inadequate as it may be. Many others live on the streets.
___"Brazil has 3 million street children," Porter noted. "It's their whole way of life, a culture in itself."
___Parents are eager for their children to attend the schools sponsored by Reencontro, because they recognize it as a way out of the poverty cycle, Sherwood observed.
___"The people want to send their children to the mission schools because of the quality education they receive," she said. "It's a nurturing, encouraging environment with smaller classes and individual attention."
___The children not only learn academic subjects and Christian values but also gain hands-on experience in baking and selling bread in the school's bakery. The bakery serves the dual purpose of teaching the children an important trade and providing income for the school.
GABRIELLA, a student at Sao Lorenco School in Niteroi, works in the school's bakery.
___"Instead of selling drugs on the streets, the children learn to sell bread," Porter said.
___At the request of Nilson Fanini, pastor of Niteroi's First Baptist Church and former president of the Baptist World Alliance, the Texas Baptist volunteers planted vines, created walking paths and repaired broken playground swings at Sao Lorenso.
___They also left a living message on the hillside, planting flowers on the hill in a pattern to spell out "paz," the Portuguese word for "peace."
___"The hillside is so steep we almost couldn't stand on it, and the ground was so hard, it was a struggle digging," Sherwood said.
___In addition to working at Sao Lorenso School, the Texas Baptists also visited other mission points of First Baptist Church of Niteroi and its Reencontro Ministries.
___Originally, the Texas Baptist team had been assigned to Boa Vista Hill, a day shelter for street children and school for students in grades one to eight. But due to security issues, the group was shifted to Sao Lorenso.
___"It's an area so dangerous, the police don't even go into it anymore," Porter said.
___The Texans visited Boa Vista Hill School one day, but only after locals warned them about precautions they needed to take to ensure their safety. The key, they were told, was not to become separated from the vehicle that was known to belong to Reencontro Ministries.
___"You'll be safe as long as you're escorted by the mission car. The drug lords will not harm you because they know the mission takes care of their children," local residents said.
___The Texas Baptists also toured Cursos Professionalizantes, a vocational-technical school that offers job training in 29 fields, ranging from hair dressing to auto mechanics. The Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger helps provide equipment and curriculum materials for the training school, enabling students to learn how to provide financially for their families.
___Sherwood, associate dean of the school of nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and the rest of the volunteer team also had the opportunity to visit one of the two medical clinics operated by Reencontro.
___The two clinics are directed by Nelson Rocha, a former health-care official with the Brazilian government. About 100 health-care providers work with the clinics, providing medical, dental and nursing services.
___"Dr. Rocha has never had medical mission volunteers from the United States come to work with him," Porter noted, adding that a team of volunteers would enable the clinics to move out of their facilities and into the favelas. "I'd love to see Texas Baptists be the first to send a medical team."
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