“San Agustín renace en Belén” is scheduled to be aired on Sunday, December 16 at 11:30 am (Spanish time) in La2 of TVE.
The Saint Augustine Social Action Center was established in 1999 to commemorate the first one hundred years of the Augustinian Recollect presence in Brazil. Four years after, coinciding with the feast of Saint Rita, the center began its operation. A space in the parish was dedicated to the most poor of the Canudos district in the Brazilian city of Belén, which is the capital of the state of Pará at the mouth of the Amazons.
Each year, thirty different courses are offered in Saint Augustine Social Action Center. The students receive a diploma at the end of the course. All these courses have civil recognition, which are highly recognized and accepted by the businessmen in Pará.
Together with this formation program, health care is another feature of this center. There is no health center within the area and, when a neighbor needs to see a doctor, he has to still go to the faraway districts of Terra Firme or Guamá. The Center, which has nine health specializations have catered to some 6,300 needy persons last year.
The report covers also the work of the Augustinian Recollect NGO, Haren Alde, in the area, as well as the amazing project “Solo Arte” dedicated to the care and formation of young girls of the district through classical dance and ballet.
Breves
“Niños de agua” will be the last segment to be aired by the program “Pueblo de Dios” in 2012. Its transmission is scheduled on December 30 in its usual time slot. The team of the program has elaborated a documentary in the city of Breves of the island of Marajó, at the mouth of the Amazons, where the Augustinian Recollect religious, the sisters of the Notre Dame de Namur and the sisters of Charity of Saint Anne denounce the lack of water and sexual abuses against children.
The report presents two missionaries who are living in the community of Breves. They run a daycare center for special children and manage construction of schools in the areas where poor families live. The friars also maintain a vegetable garden in the parish, attend to grass root communities and offer a service of hope and evangelization through the arts.