Since Lifewords Brazil incorporated Choose Life, our interactive, Bible-based curriculum, into their work in 2016, more and more of our partners are using the resources with children in poor and violent communities.

Choose Life, originally developed as a response to the HIV / AIDS crisis in Africa, continues to change perspectives in this new context, helping young people change how they see themselves and the world, and in turn, how the world sees them. 

Many of the Lifewords partners in Brazil are dealing with difficult situations in their communities: violence, drug trafficking, family problems, teenage pregnancy, conflict with the authorities.

Cleisse Andrade, Lifewords Brazil Director, reflects: "How can we help children make good choices, despite growing up in such hostile environments? It seems impossible if they are not helped to reflect on the best choices they can make and what the consequences of bad choices are."

Luciana Falcão, a pastor in Palameiras, Brazil, uses Choose Life at her church with children from 10–15 years of age.

We use Choose Life with children who have usually had no experience of church. It has become an essential programme to help these children who are living daily with violence in their community, helping them reflect not only on their choices and their consequences, but also on the choices of other children in their community.

The Choose Life methodology enables children to express their thoughts and creativity. She continues: "Everyone feels valued when their opinions are being considered. They feel welcomed, respected, and it is a space for them to grow."

The sessions also go beyond this, helping children reflect on the choices available to them. Luciana shares one of her experiences: "At each meeting, we observe the change in thinking of the young people we work with. The uncle of Marcos*, one of our teenagers, told me something extraordinary. He said that the people where his nephew lives have noticed that he is no longer on the streets making trouble. They ask the uncle: 'Where's your nephew, what's going on with him? We don't see him fighting in the streets anymore.'"

For Marcos, Choose Life has changed how he responds to the world around him, and even how others respond to him. He regularly attends the church's Choose Life sessions, and he is trying harder at school.

I believe he needed Choose Life so that he could be seen in another way, as someone who can produce good things and contribute to society. This change took place the first time we used Choose Others. With each meeting, he's happier, smiling, something he didn’t do much before. 

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