June has been a month of celebration here in Brazil.  

World Cup fever is exploding, with the yellow, green and blue of the Brazilian flag flying from houses, lamp-posts, car doors and children´s schoolbags.   On the days that Brazil is playing, all work and school is cancelled.      In corners of every square and at the school gate, children huddle together showing off their albums of football cards and noisily swopping Greek goalkeepers for Brazilian strikers.  

The June parties have also been raging here in Florianopolis.  These parties are a mixture of Northeast country tradition, mixed with the hot wine and roasted pinhão (like chestnuts) of the colonists in the South.   On these cool winter nights, amidst bonfires and traditional funfair games, everyone dresses up as country bumpkins: straw hat, blacked out teeth, checked shirt, slim tie and jeans for the boys and colourful Aunt-Sally dresses, pigtails, rouged cheeks and eyeliner freckles for the girls. 

At Recontar, June has been a month of celebration also.    In the middle of this month, we celebrated the unanimous decision taken at our General Assembly to become the first social franchise of the Child Health Association.  This strengthens our relationship with the organization in Rio de Janeiro, improves our ability to support the replication of the methodology in other places and Recontar´s national sustainability.  It also means that we lose the Recontar part of our name to become part of a national organization with one unified name:  Associação Saúde Criança or Child Health Association. From now on, under threat of being fined R$1, I will refer to the NGO as Child Health Association rather than Recontar!  

We celebrated with a week of activities organized around the first visit of Dr. Vera, the doctor who started the work with children and families in the Lagoa Hospital in Rio de Janeiro twenty years ago.    Alastair was a trustee of the charity that Vera set up in Rio and they had been friends in the five years before he had died.    Now for the first time, she was coming to see the work in Florianopolis that her work in Rio had inspired.   

It was an emotional time for me.    I watched her talk to the mothers of the programme here. I  listened to her speaking to supporters and volunteers at our General Assembly and our Pasta Benefit Night.  Again and again, I happily received her positive feedback about how strongly and quickly the organization was developing here.   Her comments confirmed to me that we are achieving what we set out to achieve over two years ago.     

At our fundraising event during the visit, more than 150 people celebrated together over wine and pasta with special sauces made by local chefs.  To the sound of live piano music, we toasted the new name of the organization and the milestone of becoming a social franchise.   We also toasted the 28 families that are currently in the programme, the 63 children being supported by the organization and the impact that the programme is having in their lives.  

The social worker Marcelo (at last a man amongst women) told us of how the families were now beginning to take courage to demand their rights, with the confidence given to them by being associated with the NGO.   One mother, for example, needed a referral for an exam for her child, yet the local GP surgery would not provide the referral.   Under Marcelo´s guidance, she had asked for it several times and been refused.   `Try one more time and if they don´t give it to you, call me reverse charges from their phone,´   Marcelo encouraged her.  The mother returned to the GP surgery, asked once more and was refused.  When Marcelo spoke to the government worker on the phone and told him that he was in violation of the child´s rights and that he would have to refer the case to the office of the public defender, the government worker quickly apologized and provided the necessary referral.  In these ways, the families are learning that they have a right to ask and a further right to insist to ensure the health and wellbeing of their children.   

The preparation for the visit and the events around it were led by trustees and the workers, with volunteers providing invaluable support.   Given the birth of the beautiful Eoin, I could only be superficially involved.   The achievements of this month were due to the leadership and commitment of these three groups here in Brazil;  trustees, workers and volunteers, demonstrating the organizational strength and local ownership of the organization.   

These June celebrations brought together over 150 people, raised R$3500 locally for the NGO, mobilized strong new partnerships, enabled two high-level meetings with local government and achieved 8 TV and press appearances to raise awareness of the good work being done at the NGO.  

To top it all off, all we need now is to win the World Cup!!