The professional athletes training Brazil favela teens

Hey kids, in this video, we learn all about the sports programme that former professional athletes in Brazil have started in the Caramujo favela, offering teenagers training in various Olympic sports in order to give them an opportunity for a better future.

Inaugurated at the end of 2020, the Caramujo Social and Sports Park offers weightlifting, badminton, archery, athletics, skating and wrestling classes to young people living in the favela, and is already changing their lives for the better.

“Our biggest dream is not even a medal, it’s to give them an opportunity,” says Juliano Rocha, Supervisor of the Caramujo Social and Sports Park. “This is a place of initiation into various sports and certainly many will go forward in some of these sports in the future.”

Caramujo is considered one of the most dangerous favelas in the Brazil, but programmes like this aim to provide an opportunity for a better future.

“I would be doing nothing (if it wasn’t for the project),” says programme participant Samuel Herculano, “I’d be studying, but with nothing in mind, not thinking about anything. For many who join the project, this is a shining light, a new path.”

Pan-American medalist in weightlifting, Aline Campeiro teaches her expertise in the sport at the project. As someone herself who started in a social sports project in the Mangueira favela in Rio de Janeiro, she knows first-hand the impact of sports in people’s lives.

“When they come here, they get together, they chat, their conversation involves sports, it changes their ideas,” Campeiro said.

Meanwhile, teachers hope to discover local hidden talents who would never have been discovered if it weren’t for the access the project offers to Olympic sports.

View the original video here.

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