(Sam) Meninadança

Last year we got in touch with an English journalist called Matt Roper who has been working for years to combat under-age prostitution in Brazil. In July we went to a ´Brazilian dinner´ that he was running to raise awareness about the issue, and to present information about his new project/movement called Meninadança. We really liked the sound of his vision and strategy, and found that it had many similar threads to the direction we were going in. As well as a good structure and foundation for getting there! We remembered this when our Recife plans then fell through last week, and e-mailed Matt again to arrange to meet up, only to find out that in a few days time he was holding a day conference for Meninadança! And it was just ten minutes down the road from our house! 

For the few days leading up to the conference we were really excited about the possibilities, as we'd read both of Matt's books, and become more familiar with what he was doing over the last few years. We knew that he had a similar heart to ours, and couldn't wait to hear more about it. By the day of the conference we were fairly sure that we wanted to be involved in the project, and then the day simply confirmed our feelings, and gave us an even better picture of the work of Meninadanca! We came away extremely excited!!


It was awesome to see that the overall strategy is similar (yet more developed!) to our idea of working within the local poor communities where the girls come from, rather than just on the streets where the more obvious face of prostitution is found. You can read more about the charity on their website www.meninadanca.org 

We´ll include more about their vision and about the organisation in the next post, but suffice it to say – we really want to work with them! We chatted with Matt the following day (the day before he emigrated to Brazil with his wife and son!) and he seemed equally positive about us working with them, which was good news! We concluded that since he needed time to settle in and to sort out a structure for receiving a bigger team in Brazil, and since we wanted to have at least 6 months of life planned after such a long period of uncertainty (hopefully to work in our local community in London), then we would keep in touch over the next couple of months and aim to fly out in the summer!! Please pray for positive communications over the next few months!