Keep 655 students in school

Help the brothers and sisters of sick children in Rio de Janeiro stay in school.

Why we care: Siblings of sick children have a higher risk of dropping out of school in order help pay for increasing family expenses.

How we’re solving this: This project will pay for the school supplies and the salary of one case manager, to help keep 655 students in school.

Associação Saúde Criança (ASC) has developed an educational program to keep children in school. The siblings of sick children are often neglected and feel forced to drop out of school in order to get jobs to help pay for increasing medical fees and other family expenses. This project will pay for the school supplies for 655 children, ages 1 to 16, and the salary of one teacher. The case manager will contact all the children’s schools to monitor how they’re doing and help them with any problems they may face. The school supplies include:

• pencils,
• notebooks,
• backpacks,
• erasers,
• scissors,
• glue,
• and diaries.

This educational program is a portion of ASC’s “Family Action Plan,” which is designed to break the vicious circle of the re-hospitalization of sick children. For the last 21 years, ASC has been able to help over 43,000 people through this plan. In 2013, ASC will be able to help more than 9,000 families through the help of the government of Belo Horizonte in Brazil.