“CAIS” stands for “Center for holistic help for the deaf” and is part of the social work of the Convenção Batista Pioneira, the partner convent of EBM INTERNATIONAL in Brazil. The deaf learn to communicate with sign language in the CAIS project.
Many children in Brazil are living on the streets. Either their parents work in order to make a living or they are overwhelmed with their own problems in life. The children are growing up without any perspectives. The social centers in Ijuí and Cotia are places of refuge for many children and youth.
Many children and youth in Brazil live in poverty and are being neglected. Crime, drug trade, prostitution, and abuse are the biggest dangers for them. For children like these a social center was set up in Diadema, a town close to São Paulo.
In the eighties, a church planting ministry started in the bleak part of the mountainous area of the state Espírito Santo. There are about 120 000 descendants of the German Pomeranians living in great poverty and no perspective. They are heavily influenced by superstition and the occult.
Children from slums do not have a chance to go to preschool since there is none or are not enough preschools in those areas. Without having gone to preschool though, they have a tough start in school. PEPE is a preschool program for these children.