São João - the patronage festival of Saint John the Baptizer - took place in Araruna this month as one of the biggest parties of the year.
One week the city was in "state of emergency" and every evening you could watch the traditional campfires on the street corners. Our centre was well-visited that week, too. Over 13 bookings revived the centre over the public holidays. There was even a couple from England, who visited not just because of the celebrations but also the projects in the surrounding communities.
The children group of the education centre celebrated São João as well with the traditional "Quadrilha" dance. They rehearsed the weeks before to be able to perform the dance during the celebrations.
Picture: The children group dancing "Quadrilha"
But also in the beginning of the month our centre was well-attended. Eventually two external seminars with out-of-town professors took place. One seminar was about how to produce sweets out of fruits ("Doce") and the other seminar was about the right and healthy treatment of food in restaurants, hotels, snack bars and at home. With over 35 participants in total both seminars became a success. The courses have the purpose one the one hand to give incentives to vary the food at the homes of the people in the surrounding communities and on the other hand to give the women the possibilities to gain a little money e.g. by selling the sweets.
In June honey was delivered to the CONAP programme, once again (info CONAP programme: state-driven project, which buys our honey to distribute it to the children crèches of the town). With this delivery we already have produced and delivered more than one ton of honey this year. Though, the full productivity has not been reached, yet. Now after the heavy rainfalls the flora begins to evolve and the trees and bushes start to flourish. Best conditions for the honey productions of our bee tribes.
Another "Mutirão" (community work) was organized in one the surrounding communites (Varelo de Baixo) this month. A part of a house, which was about to collapse, was renovated for a young family. With 15 participants, including 4 bricklayers, we were able to improve their house considerably on the Sunday of the Mutirão. Improvements they would not have been able to achieve on their own.
Presentation of a new project
In Araruna there are still today a lot of people who suffer from famine, because they don't have the money to buy food on the weekly market. Those who suffer the most under these conditions are often the children. That also shows the statistics of the "Pastoral das Crianças" (a project for mal-nourished children), which supports over 500 mal-nourished children of the city at the moment. Seu Damião is an already retired and very religious person, who visits voluntarily sick and weak people of the city each week. He told us, that people always come to him to ask for beans, since they have no money to buy this Brazilian basic food on the weekly market. Though, he always has to decline, because he himself has hardly enough money to afford these things.
Our idea would be to give those people a little help by buying one or two little bean silos (one silo contains approx 240 kilos). Thus Seu Damião no longer would have to refuse their request but would be able to help them with a few kilos beans.
For each silo we would need about 200 Euro.For further information about all the projects you can explore our site (www.armemenschen.de) or write an e-mail ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
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