The project in summary
Improve expressive capabilities of children living in the slums of Montevideo, Uruguay.
The project in detail
The project aims to help children communicate effectively and learn to trust themselves and others. It also intends to reduce the exclusion of children living in the slums and to give TECHO Uruguay’s work an artistic perspective.
The workshops, supported by Alta Mane, involved 40 children from 4 slums surrounding Montevideo. These are informal settlements whose dwellers have no right to the land they occupy. Often deprived of basic infrastructure and services, Montevideo slums witness a high unemployment, job insecurity and dropout rate due, in part, to marginalization and poverty.
From April to October 2017, TECHO Uruguay trained 8 volunteers who in turn, organized 4 workshop for 40 children from 4 slums of Montevideo from July to September. The workshops produced and represented a collective narrative from the stories told by each participant. Children worked on the preparation of a collective book and its staging. They received the rudiments of improvisation and on October 28th, they performed the play “Libro Vivo” at the “Ensayo Abierto” theatre in Montevideo, gathering 60 people in the audience.
TECHO is an NGO founded in Chile in 1997 to improve the living conditions in informal settlements. It has seats in several Latin American countries.
TECHO Uruguay has been operating for 13 years in 20 informal settlements in Montevideo helping residents run urban, education and career development projects.
