The Need

The children of Brazil have many needs. Roughly one-half the population are children under the age of 18 years. When we look at statistics, we see that half of these children are not having their basic needs met. A significant portion of Brazil goes to bed with an empty tummy, in inadequate environments, and without basic hygienic standards being met. To ease some of their burdens, LIMIAR advocates for their various needs.

To give you an idea of the diversification of children's needs, we present some of the projects LIMIAR has undertaken over the past nineteen years.

LIMIAR receives requests to undertake all projects directly from the Brazilian court or an institution.

 Past Projects

• Monthly support to a 7-year-old girl with significant delays. This support allows her grandmother to take her from the orphanage, raise her at home, and secure therapy for her.
• Support of three teens at a two-year technical college in Ohio. These children came through governmental orphanages with a strong desire to better themselves and not repeat the cycle of poverty. They are studying law and hotel management.
• Monthly support for a simple Brazilian family caring for their son, a bearer of severe cerebral palsy.  Donation of a wheel chair.
• Monthly support for two single mothers whose sons have chronic poor health.
• Purchasing books for various orphanages to encourage reading interest in the children.
• Providing soccer equipment, jerseys and shoes for a small orphanage's boys soccer club.
• Helping a couple start a small business in order to earn funds to maintain three grandchrildren in their home.
• Enabling a single father to repair and enlarge his home so his 4 children can leave the orphanage and come home.
• Special sponsorships of teens, without families, for professional training.
• Subsidizing the rent and food of a single mother's family of 7 children.
• Helping two teens to have a home of their own to go to at age 18, when they leave their orphanage, and preparing them for jobs with courses in office work.

• Monthly support to impoverished Brazilian families who have adopted ... so as to sustain the placement.
• Monthly purchase of soy milk for a lactose-intolerant infant.
• Monthly support to an orphanage seeking to enhance the material resources it can provide for children.
• Monthly milk money for an orphanage sheltering approximately 40 children.
• Foster care for children who do not thrive in institutional care.
• Monthly food baskets to Brazilian families ... so that their families will not need to be institutionalized.
• Scholarships for English lessons and/or computer/office training for teens in orphanages ... so as to give them marketable job skills.
• Establishment of a classroom of 6 computers and teacher at an all-boys orphanage ... giving job skills and incentive to progress in school. This classroom was financed through cooperation with Rotary Club International.
• Airfare to the USA and free health treatment/surgery for children without other resources.
• Artificial legs, prosthesis, wheel chairs, hearing aids, braces, crutches, orthopedic shoes.
• A special orphanage, small home, for 15 children in Sao Paulo maintained for 11 years.
• A refurbished sewing machine enabling a mother to earn a living as a seamstress, remove her children from an institution, and raise them at home.
• Parties celebrating children's birthdays or holidays.
• A small truck given to an orphanage in a rural location, enabling them to purchase food in bulk and transport donated goods.
• Vaccinations for the children of a private orphanage in Fortaleza, Ceara.
• Repairs to/construction of various orphanages.
• The building of small, simple houses for families throughout Brazil in attempts to keep the family together.
• Scholarships for a deaf child and for a developmentally challenged child to attend special schools in Sao Paulo.
• Diagnostic & medical evaluations, psychological counseling, hearing tests, physical therapy.
• Subsidies and airfares for the adoptions of physically challenged children and large sibling groups.
• Foster homes for children in transition, needing shelter & temporary care.
• Yearly purchase of school supplies for a large Sao Paulo orphanage.
• The salary for a teacher at a government orphanage to reinforce the school studies of teens.