The Augustinian Recollect centre in Fortaleza (Brazil) has just repainted the bedrooms of the beneficiaries. Its previous neutral style has been changed to new settings with children’s characters that fill the minds of the little ones with smiles and joy.
For true re-education and healing after suffering violence, abuse, exploitation or abandonment, the environment of the place that welcomes the victims is of vital importance. That is why the Saint Monica’s Home of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (Brazil) must be full of love, affection, welcome, understanding and security.
The beneficiaries of the Saint Monica’s Home come from abusive contexts in which they lived with extreme vulnerability, with little or nothing destined for their happiness, their joy, their well-being or their healthy growth.
The physical space they inhabited was marked by misery, disorder, carelessness, lack of sanitation and, aesthetically, absolute ugliness. It is not uncommon for them to live in substandard housing, among dirt and rubble, stagnant water or streets without lighting, cleaning, asphalt, sanitation services…
They come to the Saint Monica’s Home by order of the legal authority competent in matters of minors to recover from these internal wounds and the aggressions suffered. Within the comprehensive care service they receive, great importance is given to the environment, the context, the living space where their daily life takes place.
The Saint Monica’s Home has the security of a wide perimeter full of green spaces, play areas and well-kept buildings intended for their needs: the three foster homes, each for a different age range; the classroom and study area, the sports area, the open-air auditorium, the office and therapy area…
The care of the facilities, cleaning, constant maintenance is part of comprehensive education: it is essential that the girls recover internally, but also that they have a living experience of a dignified life in every sense, including physically.
In this area, an important change has just taken place. Inside the three homes, the walls until now had a neutral colour, like canvases without a message, mute. They did not hinder the process, but neither did they contribute to improving the well-being of the little inhabitants of the Home.
With dedicated and sensitive strokes and brushstrokes, an artist has used these walls with care to give life to a new enchanted setting of princesses, talking animals and heroes who, with their mere presence, represent courage, friendship or overcoming.
These walls now join the effort to create a joyful, playful and happy atmosphere throughout the Saint Monica’s Home, which cooperates in healing and in creating a warm feeling of Home.
They are iconic characters whose stories have been known and heard by almost every child – and not so child. A world of dreams and colour, vibrant and fantasy, that returns wounded bodies and minds to the innocence of childhood from which they should never have left, and much less in the way they did.
The little girls’ rooms are the space where they recover that intimacy that they once lost through violence. It is their welcoming, safe, own place, their world, where they can build personalities that overcome the past through education, affection, self-esteem and confidence.
The new painting has been made possible thanks to various benefactors of the Saint Monica’s Home who have generously donated resources to carry it forward. It is also a real image that the beneficiaries are not alone on their road to recovery, there is a whole network of affection and solidarity that supports them at every stage of their road back to themselves and to a healthy and constructive life in society.
The walls of these rooms now look like a true refuge where they can continue rewriting their stories with new colors and details, accompanied by people willing to offer love, support and new horizons.
