I want to help. How can I?
Are there curriculum resources to help teachers?
My school would like to raise money for Bahia Street. Can we? What are the best ways to do so?
I would like to donate books, clothes, or other things to Bahia Street girls. May I?
Are there employment opportunities at Bahia Street in Seattle or London?
Are there employment opportunities at the Bahia Street Center in Salvador, Brazil?
Can you recommend any other groups that do similar work to Bahia Street in Brazil?
Can individuals or tour groups arrange to visit the Bahia Street Center?
I have a skill that I would like to share with Bahia Street students. May I visit the Center and teach the girls?
I want to help. How can I?
Bahia Street is run through incredible support of interns and volunteers, and we welcome more help from new people wanting to join our community. The best way to help is to send us an email telling us about yourself and what your talents and interests are. Most people help by getting involved in the organization of events, which typically take place three or four times a year. Others help by leading fundraising efforts or donating their talents in some other way. Start by letting us know more about you, and we’ll follow up the discussion from there.
Are there curriculum resources to help teachers?
Yes, we have started to gather teaching resources to be used by teachers and students. Our “Multimedia and Learning” page on our website lists all of our available resources, and we are gathering more all the time. Teachers are welcome to send us their ideas or curriculum that they have developed for us to integrate into the resources we make available on our website.
My school would like to raise money for Bahia Street. Can we? What are the best ways to do so?
Yes, absolutely! Bahia Street is honored to receive the support of school groups and students. One way for kids to act on what they learn is to raise money to help people in another part of the world. Every bit helps, too. There isn’t a minimum amount that kids must raise in order to make a difference.
We recommend that teachers or parents start with our curricular resources, listed on the “Multimedia and Learning” page on our website. This provides some background on why we do what we do.
In the past, schools have raised money through a variety of ways:
Penny drives… A school in Seattle raised over $1,000 through their annual coin collection drive.
Music and dance events… Particularly for older students, Brazilian music lends itself to a fun party. Charge something at the door, and funds can be raised by having a good time.
Sales… A tried and true way to raise money is through selling things. Volunteers have held yard sales… kids have done bake sales… car washes often raise money. One university group has held a textbook drive, selling their used textbooks to other students and giving the money to Bahia Street.
I would like to donate books, clothes, or other things to Bahia Street girls. May I?
Yes and no– it depends. We have conducted book drives in the past, and the English language library at the Center now has plenty of books. You are welcome you to let us know about books that you may have, but chances are that we don’t need them. (Remember that all book donations need to be brought down to Brazil, and we have limited opportunities in which to do this.) Portuguese books are always welcome.
We do not take donations of clothes, and there are several reasons for this. Girls in Brazil are very stylish and would much prefer local clothes over our hand-me-downs. It is also safer for them to wear locally-bought clothes since donated clothes highlight them as possibly having a benefactor somewhere, and they might be targeted for robbery if this is thought to be the case. And lastly, we believe that we will make a more sustained impact on poverty in Salvador if we buy everything needed at the Center locally within their economy. Rita does buy clothes for girls if needed—and she certainly buys Capoeira uniforms and school uniforms—but she does so locally using small, family-owned businesses that rely on the local economy. In this way, our funds help many more people than the girls that we serve directly.
We do accept donations of art supplies and other educational resources that would be useful in Brazil. We are particularly interested in games and teaching resources that teach math and science.
Are there employment opportunities at Bahia Street in Seattle or London?
No. Bahia Street is a small non-profit run in the U.S. by three part-time staff members and hundreds of interns and volunteers. We do not currently have funding to expand our staff, and if we did, we would turn to the volunteers and interns that we already know and have worked with. In London, our office is run entirely by volunteer board members—there is no paid staff in the U.K. We welcome individuals interested in employment to consider volunteering with us.
Are there employment opportunities at the Bahia Street Center in Salvador, Brazil?
No, we don’t have any paid employment opportunities at the Bahia Street Center in Salvador. Our whole program is based on the belief that local people are the best people to work for local solutions, and all of the leaders and staff members at the Bahia Street Center are from the communities they serve. The only exception is a volunteer English teacher. We recognize that many people want to work at the Center to get involved in a grassroots effort that address the poverty that you see in Salvador, and we recommend our volunteers programs for those people wanting to gain firsthand experience with Bahia Street.
Can you recommend any other groups that do similar work to Bahia Street in Brazil?
We can’t recommend any other groups specifically because the ones that we work with don’t have volunteer programs. We refer people to the following websites:
Other possibilities come up in an on-line search with key words “volunteer” and “Brazil.”
Can individuals or tour groups arrange to visit the Bahia Street Center?
On the whole, we work hard to keep visitors out of the Center since staff members are completely focused on supporting girls as they work towards university entrance. Visitors are a big distraction to the girls who come from great disadvantage– frankly, visitors are much more interesting than their teachers (to them), and visitors can inadvertently cause distress for the girls when they start to compete for the visitors’ attention.
Visitors are allowed to visit the Center under three conditions. (1) As a part of an official Bahia Street study trip, organized for donors and supporters, (2) As a part of a Bahia Street volunteer program, like our January Work Party or English language volunteer program, or (3) As a part of a pre-arranged educational program that pays for the staffing costs associated with arranging such a visit.
We do charge for individuals and groups to visit because we are a small non-profit working hard to do great things on a shoestring, and groups take staff away from their core function. Most tour groups charge for their services– and if a visit to the Center is a part of the schedule, we ask that the groups share some of what they are charging to support a project addressing the poverty that visitors see all around them. Specific costs depend on the length and type of visit. Individuals typically donate between $50 and $100, and groups between $250 and $1,000.
I have a skill that I would like to share with Bahia Street students. May I visit the Center and teach the girls?
We do not provide opportunities for visitors to teach staff or students as a part of short term visits to the Center. For the most part, individuals and groups that visit the Center do so to learn from the staff and students there– Rita and her colleagues know so much about all aspects of Bahian society, and we shape visits around sharing her knowledge with visitors. A large part of our work for equality is to acknowledge the imbalance of power that foreign visitors inherently bring with them in visiting the Center. In other words, we try to shift ideas of ‘what we can teach them’ to ‘what they can teach us.’ We focus visits to the Center around celebrating the culture and achievements of the staff and students and not the people visiting the Center.
We fully understand that some visitors want to share what they know and can do. We have had volunteers in the past with unique talents, and they share these talents with the girls as a part of their interaction within the Bahia Street community.
