ABC (Action For Brazil's Children) Trust started as a small soup kitchen for impoverished children in the town of Lencois, Bahia, in Brazil in 1995. Patrons include Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, whose wife Jimena Page founded the charity, Brazilian soccer star Pele plus Brazilian singer, Bebel Gilberto and Oscar-nominated City of God film director, Fernando Meirelles.
ABC Trust's menuset aims are to raise awareness and funds to help street children and those at risk in Brazil, lifting them out of despair, poverty and homelessness - empowering children so that they can transform and improve their own lives. ABC Trust brings shelter, food, care, education and training to some of Brazil's poorest and most vulnerable children. The charity works through a large number of local project partners and helps over 2,500 children, focusing on the poorest region - the north-east of Brazil.
ABC Trust is committed to creating opportunities for disadvantaged young people of Brazil to have experiences which will foster healthy growth and development, so that they enjoy a future in which their children and their children's children may thrive.
LIVING ON THE STREET: "I came to the street to work. And then I stayed here. At home my family and I lacked many basic necessities; we didn't always have food and my mother was often very angry and beat us. The place where I used to live is very ugly, the place doesn't have any kind of park, any school and is very violent.
We, who live on the street, we aren't seen to be of any value and it's as if little by little we are dying. It's sad, they offer us drugs, I sniff glue but my friend is already using crack. He is very skinny and you can see his bones; he looks like a skeleton. The man who sells us the drugs tells us to steal for him in exchange for glue or a "stone" of crack. But the drug makes us forget everything, forget that we are rubbish.
On the street we are beaten by the police and the private security guards of stores. There are people who are afraid of us and there are people that feel anger towards us. Only the people from AA CRIANCA (Project Partner) come to spend time with us, stay close to us, defend us, give hope to us, and when they are here we are not afraid. They take us to the doctor, they play games with us, offer us the opportunity to have fun, they help us to make the documents we need to be considered "someone". But most of all they offer a light to us, a pathway leading away from street life, a new beginning. They say that we are not delinquents or criminals and they call us by our names. For them we are not invisible".
Alex, 15 years old, street boy, Sao Paulo City, Brazil
www.abctrust.org.uk