ONERIO
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Mission Statement
Using rugby as a platform to enable vulnerable children and young people in Rio's favelas access to vital education, employability and healthcare services.
About This Cause
OneRio aims to create a safe and enabling environment for vulnerable children and young people, where they can develop skills, and gain access to services and opportunities to build bright, successful futures for themselves and their community. Using rugby as a platform to enable support through education and healthcare, OneRio provides tangible and interconnected opportunities for educational, professional and personal development. More specifically, OneRio works to address the core drivers of poverty and gang involvement by delivering positive outcomes among its beneficiaries in personal development indices, educational attainment, job-readiness, health and well-being, and supressing financial pressures through entry-level employment opportunities and pro-bono services. CONTEXT OneRio operates in Morro do Castro, a favela of 6,000 residents in São Gonçalo (RJ). 39% of students in Morro do Castro are recipients of the Bolsa Familia benefits programme targeting people living in extreme poverty. The criminality and danger associated with Morro do Castro has created rigid social boundaries and a culture of avoidance and exclusion that has deterred professionals from entering the community. This in turn has limited residents’ access to basic services (Nalon, 2013). The resulting segregation has rendered residents as second-class citizens, unprovided for by the government, whose intervention in Morro do Castro is often limited to brutal and unforgiving policing methods. The practical implications of this stereotypical profile results in the demonstrable failings of educational and healthcare services, as well as significantly reduced employment prospects for its young people. Our surveys of the residents have shown that specific examples of this failure include, but are not limited to; recurrent absences of teachers from schools, of medical professionals at health centres, and, more worryingly, the reuse of unsterilized medical equipment though lack of supply. Further to this lack of basic services, our personal experience echoes wider research which shows young people from Morro do Castro face discrimination and unequal access to the labour market because of their postcode. After completing 16 years of education, a non-favela resident will earn on average 250% more than a favela resident with the same level of education (Perlman, 2016). The data below outlines these issues in more detail, and illustrates the need for OneRio’s programmes: Education: •68% of students in Morro do Castro are underperforming at school, with 52% at risk of failing in Portuguese, and 84% at risk of failing in Mathematics (SAEN, 2017) Employability: •84% of 18-25 year olds registered at OneRio are unemployed, Healthcare: •66% of our participants identified understaffed/under-resourced healthcare services as a key challenge in Morro do Castro. Alone, these major disadvantages facing young people of Morro do Castro would be sufficient to warrant intervention. In this community, however, the lack of intervention often has more serious consequences given the everpresent threat of the drug trade. Research has shown the high correlation between the unmet needs outlined above and youth engagement in drug trafficking: 98% of entry to drug-gangs occurs between 13-21 years of age – a demographic that constitutes 71% of our participants. The main drivers are: •Alienation from education/employment, 44%, •Financial struggles, 23% •Desire for a greater sense of belonging,12% (Observatório das Favelas). Against this backdrop, OneRio exists to target these imbalances through a framework that addresses each of the problems outlined above. Our programme is a multi-faceted intervention that uses sport as an entry point to offer emotional support and opportunities for personal growth alongside the provision of vital education, healthcare and employability services. Leveraging a wide range of partners, our offering is tailored to the particular level and needs of each individual. This holistic approach seeks to divert these young people away from the drug trade and empower them to define their own brighter future instead of the one circumstance may have laid out for them.