Yara wearing a hat in a small room with other children and two adults

Early life

Yara is just eight years old and is the 6th child in a family of seven children. She has been studying with us at our day care and then elementary school in São Paulo since she was three. Her parents are  separated and she lives with her mother who cleans houses to support the family.

The young family live in a dangerous favela. Their house is one room, made of board. Many of her siblings are unable to go to school, and only Yara and her younger half brother Pedro, who is five, are able to study with the Sisters of Mary.

Yara often arrives at school with an aching stomach because she hasn’t eaten before leaving home. She likes coming to school, she’s hard-working in her primary school responsibilities and well behaved. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up and she is progressing well – she is already in her second year of primary school with us.