A television program shows the Saint Monica’s Home as a project that helps girls and adolescents recover their lives and their self-love to free themselves from those relationships and situations that led them to a personal abyss.
On Saturday, October 5, at 11:45 in the morning, the Verdes Mares TV Station, associated with the Globo Communication Network of Brazil, broadcast a new chapter of its program Inspire&Action, directed and presented by Taís Lopes and whose objective is to promote social transformation by publicizing all kinds of projects, testimonies and actions that improve society and make better the life of the people.
The program of that day was entitled “Life is theirs: deciding for self-love and freeing oneself from toxic relationships.” Three main pieces gave an overview of this reality of women who overcome a difficult life and with self-love forget terrible situations.
The full program included testimonies from a woman who had to endure toxic relationships for 16 years and now, as a psychologist, helps other women overcome them; two other women recount how they have overcome the bullying suffered due to fatphobia that plagues this society that lives by and for the external image; and the girls and adolescents themselves from Saint Monica’s Home, who have left aggressive contexts and overcome enormous traumas to live a calm, satisfactory and full social life as women.
The program also serves to launch the “Criança Esperança” campaign of Globo Network this year, which will benefit many projects that work with children and adolescents, including Saint Monica’s Home.
During the visit to Saint Monica’s Home, the testimonies focus on the people who care for the beneficiaries: the general coordinator, the psychologist, a social mother and a social educator.
According to statistics, a child or adolescent was raped every eight minutes in Brazil in 2023. A shocking and disturbing fact, which calls for action and protection of that part of the population that so needs help and has no way to defend itself.
And speaking of action, here in Fortaleza there is a space that has been a true home for fifteen years for girls who are victims of violence, but mainly of sexual violence.
The Saint Monica’s Home today cares for about 30 girls here in the capital, between 7 and 17 years old.
Luiza Dias is the coordinator of the Saint Monica’s Home:
“The girls who are taken in have a profile of having suffered violence, especially sexual violence. We work together with other institutions using the methodology of sheltering through homes. They live here 24 hours a day, they always have a person in charge of them.
Maria Valneide is one of the “social mothers” of the Saint Monica’s Home.
“Our role is the same as we do at home in our daily lives with our children: caring. I have three adult children and I no longer live with that concern of caring for them, because they are already raised, but now I do this action of caring for those who need it, of giving love to these girls who come from broken families, who live in social vulnerability.”
Priscila Alencar is the psychologist at Saint Monica’s Home:
“The mission of Saint Monica’s Home is to transform and defend those lives that are in vulnerability. We do this by adding the institutional values of the Augustinian mission, such as spirituality, so that they can understand, transform and redefine reality as a way of giving quality back to their lives.
We want to give them the opportunity so that they can immediately live in society in an optimal way, overcoming the traumatic challenges they have gone through and managing to develop with human dignity.”
Janaína de Carla is a social worker at Saint Monica’s Home:
“These are girls who don’t even know how to write their own names when they arrive, which is sad, but over time we see this evolution that they often don’t even notice. Then they come shouting with happiness when they manage to write their name, when they make progress. That often moves me a lot, because we see the work accomplished, which is not even so much our work, but rather that they themselves are managing to build their own story.”
May there be more initiatives like this, which become the home for our girls and adolescents, who need so much help. Congratulations, Saint Monica’s Home, and all those involved in this work!
