Meninadança

Please check out the website of Meninadança (Girl Dance) to read up on their vision and objectives, and get a better idea of who we're working with. This video should also give a good visual introduction, with an incredibly moving song that a Canadian singer called Dean Brody wrote after meeting one of the girls - Leilah.

In summary, Meninadança hopes to set up various projects along the vast BR116 motorway in Brazil, using dance especially to reach out to underage girls caught in prostitution and sexual exploitation. The huge motorways that cross the interior of Brazil are actually where most prostitution is to be found, and in a recent survey by the government, they found the worst highway of all to be the BR-116. Along its 2,700 miles there are 262 places where child prostitution was known to be taking place - the equivalent of one every ten miles.

Meninadança is focusing on the motorway communities where these girls live, aiming to set up safe-houses where girls can engage in dance and other activities to increase their self-esteem, and find new meaning, hope and purpose. Through community work with the girls and their families, Meninadança hopes to rescue many girls from a life of sexual exploitation and restore them to living out their full potential.
Read more about Meninadanca here.

Thoughts on leaving...

(Sam:) I can’t quite believe we’re finally going! and I’m actually really sad about leaving. We’ve had a long time back in Eltham now, and are even more aware of what we will be leaving behind. Family, friends and community in general are so important to us, and it is painful to be partially breaking some of those connections. Having spent more focused time over the last six months investing in the children and young people in the area also makes it pretty tough to leave.


I’ve worked with marginalised young people around the community since I was sixteen, and getting stuck in full-time for six months has convinced me again of the massive importance and urgency of people sacrificing time to invest in their lives, whatever our initials views and opinions may be. The work that Superkidz does is absolutely invaluable – through them there are children who are now growing up with purpose; there are young people rejected by every other institution who now experience unconditional love and acceptance for the first time in life; and for those workers who do patiently pursue them year in year out, there are amazing moments of progress and also huge personal transformation through challenging situations. I’ll be very sad to leave here and I hope and pray that many more people will give up time each week to be a small but powerfully different voice in their lives.

Wohoooooo!!

Wohoooooooo!!! We’re finally off!

While we committed to working for Superkidz and also our church (EGCC) for six months, ending this July, we have been waiting for paperwork from Meninadança. Since this has still not materialised, the director Matt Roper has advised us to come out on a tourist visa for six months to get stuck into the project while the documents are produced. A lawyer there has advised us the same, so we’re trusting things will be sorted during these six months and we’ve booked our flights for August 15th!
This actually works really well, since their plan is for us to spend up to six months in their hub project in Belo Horizonte before then moving to a smaller town Medina, where the organisation hopes to replicate the project. So we will finish our time in Belo, then pick up our visas in London next February, and move back out to Medina longer term.

Click here to see the map with larger font on the original website (Number 1 is Belo Horizonte and number 2 is Medina).