The Saint Monica Home, a project that protects and enables Brazilian girls and adolescents overcome the violence, abuse, exploitation or aggression they have suffered, take advantage of the activities of leisure and fun during the festive holidays to unite the playful, the educational and the therapeutic.
During the month of July, the Brazilian education system offers a few days off to teachers and students for a few weeks. The internal calendar of the Saint Monica Home of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (Ceará, Brazil) is largely governed by the calendar school, since one of the main premises for the emotional and physical healing of the beneficiaries is their full school immersion.
The group of girls and adolescents has enjoyed throughout the month of July various excursions that, in various cases, have included cultural activities. Thus, at the Teatro São Luiz attended the cinema; at Club Itapark they enjoyed swimming pools and slides; in the park Sargento Prata Municipal Zoo closely observed many animals and talked to them about caring for nature.
In addition, the group has visited the Celina Queiroz Theater, has participated in shows musicals at the SESC Theatre, has taken boat trips and enjoyed the Praia do Futuro, (The Beach of the Future) one of the main and most beautiful streets in the city of Fortaleza.
All these activities stimulate the little ones in their cultural skills, while with the exits they practice a certain autonomy, they know spaces hitherto strange or oblivious to their daily life, they connect with Nature and discover together so many things that, inevitably, they share in an atmosphere of joy and fun the feelings they have before this departure from the routine for completely new spaces, places and activities.
The concepts of vacations, cultural leisure or tourist walks were not in their minds nor were they common in their environment of origin, which was normally reduced geographically just a few streets away in an environment of great material and cultural poverty.
These leisure, sports and cultural enrichment opportunities increase their well-being and quality of life, allow them to channel the energies together with other elements that are carried out with greater dedication of time within the facilities of Saint Monica Home.
Now, in August, the routine times have returned, of attendance at the regulated school and the classrooms for reinforcement and study at home, for activities that require more concentration and effort but that are carried out in an easier way after having spent a few such a complete “vacation”.
