Build a basketball court for Jacarezinho youth

Our mission

Jacaré Basquete is a project aimed at connecting, uplifting, and creating opportunities for the youth of the Jacarezinho favela in Rio de Janeiro, through basketball.

We are working to repair our community basketball court and turn it into a safe haven for the children and adolescents of Jacarezinho to gather, find joy, and be more connected to one another in a community where, off the court, they face poverty, violence and other challenges.

Why we need a safe space in Jacarezinho

Jacarezinho is a favela in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro with almost 38,000 residents. As a community with the highest percentage of Black residents in Rio de Janeiro, it is a favela that influences the city with a strong cultural movement, with the types of haircuts, the way of dancing and the music as references.

It is now also the site of the deadliest police raid in the city’s history, which took place in May and resulted in 28 deaths.

We are working to rebuild and advocate for the rights of people still reeling from the aftermath of the raid, through projects that uplift and empower residents in a community that has largely been invisible to public authorities. We have a lot of work to do: With average monthly income of less than $200, as a result of social inequality and one of the lowest life expectancies, Jacarezinho ranks among the neighborhoods with the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in all of Rio.

Jacarezinho is an urban “quilombo”, where people are very united despite all the difficulties, there are some social projects but they have sustainability problems due to the lack of support from the government. It is physically “hidden” between an avenue and an overpass, making it largely ignored despite the precarious conditions its residents live in. It has the highest rate of tuberculosis (SMS from RJ) in Rio de Janeiro.

Why basketball?

Jacarezinho is a place of extreme poverty, the absence of public policies aimed at promoting the potential of favelas undermines the opportunities of its youth. In addition to building the stigma that favelas are a violent place, it marginalizes and influences the subjectivity of young people who grow up in this environment.

Igor Luna, 13, Jacaré Basquete athlete

Jacaré Basquete proposes to subvert this logic, encouraging sport and cultural activities as a tool for social inclusion for children and adolescents, making their experience something central, rescuing their self-esteem and fostering unity, respect, team spirit and reconstruction of your identity. The practice of basketball and other cultural activities will be carried out from a perspective that promotes teaching in a contextualized way with the social, political and economic reality experienced by the project participants. The objective is to give children the tools they need, through sport, to become critical and reflective individuals who are capable of, in addition to knowing and recognizing bodily practices, acting and transforming their reality.

Our difficulties are the lack of a structured space which makes the viability of our project impossible, we only have a football field in Jacarezinho. Other than that, there are no other leisure and sports equipment in suitable conditions for the practice of sports in Jacarezinho. The dream is to have a structured space so that we can give basketball lessons and present new possible perspectives for this youth. We believe that investing in childhood is the best way to combat racism and structural poverty present in our society.

How this money will be used

Your donations will be used to purchase materials for the revitalization of the court, such as paints, rollers, brushes and cement, as well as materials for the practice of the sport such as balls, training materials and basketball hoops.

 

 

 

 

 

Who we are

Management Team: Luis Filippe, Yasmin Ialuny, Marcella Silva, Thiago Nascimento, Logan Corrêa and Bruno Monte

GoFundMe administrator: Loretta Chao, based in New York, previously covered Brazil as a foreign correspondent. She is working with Teresa Borges, based in Rio de Janeiro, to help Jacaré Basquete raise the $2,000 needed to renovate this basketball court in Jacarezinho and will transfer 100% of funds raised, minus transaction fees, to the management team, which authored the material in this campaign.