Hope Center. Augustinian Recollects. Pauini, Amazon, Brazil. 2024.

The socio-educational project of the Augustinian Recollects is fully integrated into local society during the year with multiple activities. Furthermore, the presence of the general prior to the Augustinian Recollects has allowed us to strengthen the center’s charismatic identity.

The Hope Center of the Augustinian Recollects in Pauiní (Amazonas, Brazil) is a socio-educational space where adolescents of both sexes participate in a series of training, leisure, and socialization activities during the school day and receive reinforcement food during the time they are not in formal school.

Their insertion into local society is full through continuous participation and significance in various actions, some of them of particular relevance given the character of the Center for Safeguarding the Rights of Children and Adolescence.

For example, last May, the students and monitors of the Center expressed their concerns on the occasion of a day on the rights of children and adolescents. The Hope Center filled the streets of Pauiní with color to raise awareness, mobilize, sensitize, and inform about the “Make it Beautiful” Campaign around the National Day to Combat Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescence.

The day began in front of the City Hall, and after walking through the main streets of the urban area of the municipality, we ended up in the Municipal Plaza with a musical theater. Banners, flags, and slogans accompanied the march.

A few days later, the Hope Center received volunteer professionals from the Laguna Negra, the Prelature of Lábrea medical ship. They knew the center’s story, ideology, and task and visited the training workshops. The boat offers medical and dental care to rural riverside communities and village natives. The health professionals participating in the project come from outside of the Amazon.

On June 3, they were received by the prior general of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, Miguel Ángel Hernández, accompanied by the general counselor in charge of Missions, Ismael Xuruc. The director of the recycling workshop, Lucivane, accompanied them around the facilities and introduced the beneficiaries and monitors who wanted to exchange a few words with the primary representative of the Order worldwide.

The prior general planted a tree to symbolize the commitment of the Augustinian Recollect Family to the care of the Common House. He could also attend a dance performance by a group of beneficiaries.

On June 4, finally, the Center welcomed the parents and guardians of its students. After a prayer and a few words of welcome were invited to see a performance guitar workshop musical and a theater exceptionally dedicated to mothers, which participated in the raffle for a gift given that the month of celebrations had just ended.

The cooking workshop prepared a whole series of appetizers to end the festive day and this meeting of the Center with the families of its students.