Associação de Apoio
à Criança e ao Adolescente

The hours after
school matter most.

Santa Terezinha is a neighbourhood in Recife, northeast Brazil — a city of enormous vitality and profound inequality. In Santa Terezinha, drug trafficking and crime are not abstract problems or distant statistics. They are the texture of everyday life, and for young people at a certain age, at a certain crossroads, they represent a pull that is real and strong and sometimes impossible to resist without something else to pull towards.

Since 1994, AACA has been creating that something else. After the school day ends — the hours that are so often either empty or dangerous — AACA fills the gap with arts, music, capoeira, dance, computer classes, and other activities. All free. All with a proper meal included. Because hunger is not a small barrier to concentration and dignity.

A reason to show up

The goal is deceptively simple: give children a reason to be somewhere safe, learning something real, in the company of adults who care about them. Not supervision. Not containment. Genuine enrichment, with activities that build skill, expression, physical confidence, and self-worth. Capoeira is not just an exercise — it is a philosophy of movement and respect, rooted in Brazilian history. Music is not just entertainment — it is discipline, collaboration, and cultural identity. These things matter.

The philosophy that drives AACA — "peace, brotherhood, solidarity and love" — is not decorative language. It is the method. Every activity, every meal, every interaction between staff and child is designed to build something specific: a child who knows that they belong somewhere, that they matter to someone, that the world holds possibilities for them if they stay on the path.

Cristian's story

Silent Voices sponsored Cristian Adrian — a boy whose father was imprisoned for drug trafficking, whose mother was unemployed, who lived with his grandparents in circumstances that make ordinary childhood deeply difficult. The sponsorship gave him access to everything AACA offers: arts, capoeira, computer classes, meals, and the social environment of a place run on care rather than indifference.

Silent Voices described the programme as "an escape from the drug traffickers and crime of his neighbourhood." Cristian was not a statistic. He was a kid who needed a chance and got one. That is, entirely, the point.