During school vacations, it is time for different recreational activities and training sessions directed by the Social Assistance area of the socio-educational project of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (Brazil).
Saint Monica School is a project that welcomes girls and adolescents from family or social contexts in which they have suffered some type of aggression, abuse, abandonment, violence or violation of their rights as individuals and, especially, as minors.
The competent authorities send them to Saint Monica Home because it is a center for shelter that offers comprehensive care to these victims. In this safe space they live, they are provides all their needs: food, shelter, education, therapy, play, rehabilitation, preparation for social reintegration with knowledge of their rights and the defense modes they have to avoid suffering any kind of damage again.
During the school season, which in Brazil runs from February to December with some spaces intermediate vacations, the residents at Saint Monica Home follow a routine centered precisely in formal learning. They go to external schools and receive in the Saint Monica Home facilities school support and guided study.
This leaves only weekends for other types of activities in which the school factor It is not intense, but there is learning of other types of skills, such as social ones. The characteristic of these learning is that they have a much more playful character, group coexistence, mutual knowledge.
However, the month of January is full school holidays, since in Brazil the course school and the calendar year go hand in hand. To occupy all the time normally dedicated to external school and guided study at home, many other types of activities, most of them with an important recreational component.
Among these activities, some deal with issues of great importance for daily life of the small ones, such as harassment or bullying. It is about making them aware of the need to create safe environments for themselves and their partners, detect possible negative situations before they occur, defend the most vulnerable colleagues, do not promote attitudes of disrespect, recognize games that are healthy and fun but they have no chance of becoming a danger…
The little ones have also carried out various gymkhanas within the extensive facilities of the Saint Monica Home, activities always designed to promote its originality, its creativity, teamwork and, of course, fun.
