The project is coordinated by professor Kay Tisdall at the the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and in Brazil by professor Irene Rizzini at CIESPI/PUC-Rio. The aim is to contribute to debates and actions about children and their families in two communities: Rocinha (Rio de Janeiro) and Jardim Catarina (São Gonçalo), both in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The focus is to develop partnerships to improve the state of Early Childhood Education.

The project is coordinated by professor Kay Tisdall at the the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and in Brazil by professor Irene Rizzini at CIESPI/PUC-Rio. The aim is to contribute to debates and actions about children and their families in two communities: Rocinha (Rio de Janeiro) and Jardim Catarina (São Gonçalo), both in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The focus is to develop partnerships to improve the state of Early Childhood Education.

This first bulletin describes the results of our first consultations with the two communities in the project. We have addressed two topics: 1) the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) initiatives aimed at young children. Between September and December 2020, we consulted with people who work in these communities about the challenges of caring for and working with young children especially in these difficult times.

The goal of this study is to describe the safe places children aged 0-8 inhabit outside of their homes in the low-income Rio community of Rocinha, and to report how key actors in that community think the number and quality of safe places for children can be improved. The study has implications for young children throughout urban Brazil.

The issue of teenage pregnancy and maternity has important implications for the young women, their families and public health and other policy areas. In general, the incidence of such pregnancies has diminished in Brazil and in other countries in the last decade.

The worldwide alarm at the spread of the Zika virus is mirrored in Brazil which is the world epicenter of the current outbreak of the virus. Correlational and virologic evidence is accumulating rapidly of the connection between the Zika virus and the increase in the incidence of microcephaly in newborn babies in Brazil.

This bulletin examines the condition of children in Latin America, the particular situation of the most vulnerable children, children and youth in the situation of the streets, and examines in detail a successful attempt to roll back a regressive policy on street children in Rio de Janeiro. May 2017.