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/ WCPRC / Laureates / Pastoral da Criança's volunteers, Brazil
The World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child 2003
Pastoral da Crinça's volunteers
Cristovina Mafra Barbosa weighing a little boy
’Welcome to life!’ says Maria to the new-born baby boy in a village in north-eastern Brazil. Maria is one of Pastoral da Criança’s 155,000 unpaid volunteers who fight for every child’s right to live.

And they save many children’s lives! In the regions where Pastoral works, infant mortality is less than half what it is in the rest of Brazil.

> Meet Pastoral da Criança’s volunteers
> The prize ceremony 2005
Why have Pastoral's da Criança’s volunteers been awarded?
Pastoral da Criança’s 155,000 volunteers received The World’s Children’s Honorary Award 2003 for their unpaid but successful work to reduce mortality and under-nourishment among Brazil’s children. They teach families how to take care of their children and identify the ones who need special care. They also work to reduce violence against women and children. Thanks to the work of the volunteers, families become part of a helping community, and can thus improve their own situation. Every year, the volunteers save the lives of thousands of children. Where they work, 13 of 1,000 children die before they’re one year old and 7 of 1,000 are under-nourished. In the rest of Brazil, 35 of 1,000 children die and 16 of 100 are under-nourished.
Leaves
Cooking medicine
Pastoral gathers the mothers at the school so they can cook various medicines from herbs and leaves that they have picked.

> Medicine in nature
portrait Joice Carine Santana Da Silva

Joice is the children's friend
Joice, 15, has been a Pastoral leader since she was eight years old. Her friends think that she should fraternise more with people her own age, but to Joice, that doesn’t matter: the children are her life.

> Meet Joice

portrait Pedro do Nascimento da Rocha

Pedro and the poisonous snake
Pedro is sitting in a canoe on the Amazon River with his brother Antonio. For almost 15 years Pastoral da Criança’s volunteers have been fighting for a better life for the children in Pedro’s village, Terezina. Today, children are no longer dying of malnutrition in the village.

> Meet Pedro

portrait Jonathan Gonçalves dos Santos
Maybe one day Brazil’s soccer team will be thanking Pastoral da Criança for its right back. For Jonathan, who is 11, life is all about one thing: soccer! He trains every day and dreams about becoming a professional soccer player. Just like his idol, Cafú, Jonathan comes from Jardim Irene, a poor suburb of São Paulo. He was weighed every month from his birth until he was 6 by Pastoral da Criança, which tries to give poor children a better start in life.

> Meet Jonathan
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