JANUARY / FEBRUARY Report and Special Fund Raising Event on March 1st.

On March 1^st Mundo Real will host an informative and festive fundraising PARTY for the First Steps project in Asheville, North Carolina, at the Rocket Club in West Asheville. If you happen to be in the area please come join us at 8pm. Musical entertainment will include live performances by Jar-e, Banana da Terra, Zambumba, and Jonathon Scales. The event is certain to raise your awareness of our efforts in Brazil as well as get you in the dancing mood. In addition, there will be a silent art auction. Works provided by local artists will help raise funds for the efforts of First Steps in Rocinha. The evening begins at 8:00 PM and their will be a $10 cover at the door.

To date, First Steps has succeeded in coordinating basic services and assistance for 100 special needs residents in Rocinha. To reiterate, special needs residents are those with incapacitating mental and physical disabilities, the chronically ill, and the elderly. It is also important to repeat that most of these individuals, and their families, are unaware of their universal human rights, as well as those bestowed upon them as citizens of Brazil. This is evident from the sheer number of residents who have never received proper health care, and in some cases received no health care whatsoever.

To aid us in finding and identifying these individuals, in a community as heavily populated and complex as Rocinha, First Steps utilizes a list of over 600 special needs residents that we obtained from a local public agency. Our team has been working tirelessly to verify whether the list is accurate, up-to-date, and representative of Rocinha’s special needs population.

With this objective in mind First Steps is meticulously developing a complete and updated list of those with special needs. The numbers continue to increase well beyond those collected by the public agency, and as a result the need to provide basic services to these individuals increases as well. First Steps anticipates that its list of those with special needs will grow to over 1000 by the end of 2008.

First Steps and Mundo Real have conducted 75 in-depth interviews with these individuals and their families as part of an intensive research initiative intended to assist First Steps in organizing a comprehensive program plan built around education, prevention and direct assistance.

The services provided by First Steps continue in the area of transportation, advocacy, house visits, and health related education (including citizen and human rights training).

Mundo Real’s 2008 goals for the First Steps Project:

1. Continue to sustain, expand and improve upon our current work efforts.
2. Obtain a van adapted for disabled individuals. Having one specially equipped van would meet the first requirement of our transportation goal of eventually acquiring several vehicles for transporting special needs resident and thus vastly improving their ability to move.
3. Acquire a storefront office space along Rocinha’s main road in order to better serve the needs of Rocinha's special needs population. This would allow us to become better known, significantly improving our presence in the community and our ability to inform locals of our project's activities. An office would function as a concrete location where we could enhance our capacity to organize advocacy-based services for community residents by providing educational workshops. We estimate, based on official census figures that as many as 5,000 residents in Rocinha could directly benefit from and utilize the support, educational, and organizational services that First Steps aims to expand/create.
4. Prepare and distribute First Steps provided family food packages to those residents in most need of them.
5. Initiate an increasingly prevention oriented movement that would include working with high risk youth, pregnant teenagers, and young mothers among other vulnerable groups in the community.

December 2007

2007 has been a very rewarding year for Mundo Real. We have crossed many milestones while supporting the project Primeiros Passos (First Steps). However, we are striving to achieve many more goals in the coming year. To get up to speed, our goal is to raise $5000 dollars to start off the new year. This will cover expenses needed to bring us into 2008. In order to keep the project rolling we will need to raise more funds for the year to come.

First Steps currently has two full-time staff and one part-time individual. Our monthly salary expenditures, while essential, are not our primary fund raising objectives during the current period/coming year. This is mainly because we (Mundo Real Inc.) have been highly successful at maintaining payrolls at manageable levels, and the current staff of First Steps has, from beginning, been dedicated to a single cause: establishing an independent community-based and community-led organization to empower disabled and elderly residents of Rocinha. Our staff has dedicated themselves to the development of the organization, First Steps, before any other individual interests, and for the first several months they worked wholeheartedly, and virtually full-time, as volunteers. However, they recognize, as do we, that in order to prosper as an organization certain financial resources are necessary.

During the past fiscal year of First Steps work, and in particular over the last three months (since Sept. 2007), the staff has identified (collectively) the following 3 items listed below as central to our organization development goals during the forthcoming year. A brief description and financial estimate for each objective is listed below:

Principal Project Goals for 2008:

1. Acquire a van for transporting Rocinha's (special-needs) population.

1. Handicapped equipped vans currently available in Rocinha = 0

2. Planned acquisition of van by First Steps:

i. New Van (Handicapped Equipped): 20,000 USD

ii. Used Van (Operational for Handicapped Transport): 5,000 USD

2. Acquire/Secure Office Space for First Steps:

1. Annual Rent for street level storefront office space in Rocinha: 7,500 USD

2. Annual Costs of Supplies and Equipment for office space in Rocinha

i. Telephone, Internet, and Electric: 3,000 USD

ii. General Offices Supplies: Paper, Printer, etc: 1,500 USD

3. Maintain an ongoing Emergency Assistance Fund for Rocinha's most vulnerable disabled/elderly residents.

Transportation Expenses (to and from medical appointments): Projected Annual Expense: 2,500 USD

Medication and Medical Supplies: to cover costs of medication that many families cannot afford but vitally need and/or to cover costs for necessary medical equipment they similarly need but cannot afford; for example, wheelchairs (second-hand), orthopedic devices, oxygen tanks, etc. Projected Annual Expense: 3,000 USD

Construction and home-repair materials for First Steps clients/members whose houses (shanties) are in desperate need of emergency repair, such as; leaks, crumbling infrastructure, insufficient running water and/or electricity, etc. Projected Annual Expense: 2,000 USD

November update

The Mundo Real webpage is now up! You can access the website at: www.1mundoreal.org. The website currently highlights two projects Radio Rakama (Madagascar) and Primeiros Passos (Brazil). Radio Rakama recently received a 5,000 dollar grant to help it continue in its operations. Find out more at: 1mundoreal.org/Radio%20Rakama.html

The project Primeiros Passos continues to help and assist the disabled population in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro. Recently the project members have been compiling a list of community volunteers to help out in the various tasks in assisting those with special needs whether it be construction projects on dilapidated homes, or transportation to doctor appointments. Cely has continued to receive medical supplies such as geriatric diapers, wheelchairs, and medicine and distribute them to families in need. Recently Find out more on our website at www.1mundoreal.org.

Project Primeiros Passos (First Steps)

In 2006 Mundo Real began working on its first project in the large urban slum of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro. We were invited to work alongside the local residents of Rocinha to develop the project Primeiros Passos (First Steps). The goal of Primeiros Passos is to respond to the unmet rehabilitative, therapeutic, supportive, and recreational needs of Rocinha’s physically and mentally challenged residents and their families.

Watch our short documentary about Primeiros Passos at: www.youtube.com/mundoreal21

In less than six months since its founding, Primeiros Passos has successfully organized services and assistance for over 100 families in the form routine house visits, educational workshops, transport, and much needed medical supplies. Primeiros Passos Director and Founder Cely Ferreira de Oliveira is a resident of Rocinha and the mother of a child with Cerebral Palsy.