Rio Carnival and Community Project

"Quest4Change seeks to relieve financial hardship and poverty in disadvantaged groups."

Caring for the boys of Casa Lar

Since 2006 Quest4Change have been working with the Mangueira Social Project during their particularly busy Rio carnival period. During this time we provide extra manpower and financial support for Tia Neuma and Casa Lar de Mangueira, a home for orphaned and abandoned boys with special needs.

What the problem?

The main focus of this project is the Casa Lar home for boys with physical and mental disabilities, through with fundraising and volunteering. The 18 boys who live at Casa Lar have been abandoned or orphaned, and are faced with the difficult, but common combination of poverty and disability, which feed into each other. The Tia Neuma School is for gifted children in the Mangueira favela, providing the children with opportunities they would otherwise miss out on.

How Quest4Change helps

Quest4Change has been supporting Casa Lar for the last 5 years, providing volunteers to support core staff: helping with caring and taking the boys on valuable fun days out. Our volunteers also help out at the school during the busy carnival period, helping the children prepare for this highlight of their year.

By providing essential funds to Casa Lar, Quest helps to pay for basics such as food, transport and medicines. Despite the severe difficulties faced by Casa Lar in the past years, it is a model home that strives to go beyond an institution. Casa Lar has created and maintained a therapeutic, stimulating environment. A priority is integration into Mangueira life, seeking to improve the boys' quality of life and full inclusion in the community, as enshrined in the Human Rights Act.

Watch the boys practicing for Carnival in 2009

Project Partner

Quest4Change works on this project with the Mangueira Social project supporting the UN Millennium Development Goal 1 'Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger'. Set-up by Brazilian ex-Minister for Sport, Chiquinho, the Mangueira Social Project originally had the aim of providing sporting and cultural rereation for the children of the deprived Mangueira favela outside of Rio de Janeiro. It is Casa Lar, a home for mentally and physically disabled boys, set up as a side project in Mangeira, where the main part of Quest4Change's collaboration, comes in. Quest first made contact with the project in May 2003 and from the start it was clear that this was going to be a partnership of great benefit to all.

The Casa Lar approach

The staff of Casa Lar prioritise for the young men their rehabilitation and promotion of integration into family and community life. Ultimately, the goal is to improve their quality of life and men's right to full inclusion in the Mangueira community.

The routine and activities conducted with residents are designed by skilled staff to develop social skills and relationships, all of which contribute to an environment in which the personal interests of each of the boys are developed, encouraging them to participate as fully as possible in the economic, cultural and social life of their community.

Rio group with Casa Lar boys Tia Nuema Kids

Latest News:

November 2011 update:

Life for the boys at Casa Lar is still a happy one. Thanks to the support of UK trusts and individual donors, Quest4Change has been able to make a number of valuable purchases for the home, and numerous trips have been arranged for the boys. They are all attending some form of school according to their needs or their circumstances.

We are extremely pleased to report that we received very generous donations totalling £5,710 from the James Tudor Foundation and the Strathspey Charitable Trust, which will pay for medicines for the boys for eight months.

In May 2011, our Brazil Coordinator Danny Martinez travelled to Rio de Janeiro for 10 days in order to oversee disbursement of funds and discussion of future plans for addressing the boys' needs.

The first few months of this year were hard for Casa Lar, with the government partnership cancelled again. Funding from the government has been restored, which is fantastic, but it is significantly less than the home received in 2008. It is ESSENTIAL that we continue to support the boys as much as we can. In the future, the ideal situation would be to purchase a new home in Mangueira and become fully independent of the Mangueira Social Project.

To all our supporters, Thank you.