• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Boxing-Boxing offers escape valve for favela children in Brazil

October 7, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

October 7, 2021

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – When 13-year-old Mariangela Pereira da Silva was accosted by a strange man near her home earlier this year she was frightened.

She felt she had to do something and a bar of chocolate helped her reach a decision. A local NGO was offering chocolate to anyone who wanted to try out boxing and Da Silva went along.

She loved it. She gained a new passion and a new moniker. If she ever makes it in the ring her friends joke her nickname will be “Twix”.

Da Silva is part of a fledgling boxing programme in Capao Redondo, a favela on Sao Paulo’s gritty south side.

The project has been helped by a surge of interest in the sport after the summer Olympics, where Brazil won three boxing medals, their biggest haul at a single Games.

“I imagine having a gold medal around my neck in that gigantic ring and my mum being proud of me and me being happy at winning,” Da Silva said of her boxing dreams.

The programme is run by an NGO called NAVE. NAVE was formed in 2014 to provide educational and cultural programmes, but indoor activities were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sport continued outdoors and NAVE added boxing to its roster of activities in June this year, believing it teaches children how to channel their aggression.

“Letting them punch in a controlled environment like boxing is an escape valve for them,” Bruno Hereira dos Santos, NAVE’s founder and president, told Reuters. “They don’t have a lot of options so even the girls enjoy it.”

Da Silva is the first to don gloves when the sparring begins alongside a dirt football pitch near the summit of the hillside community.

The young boxers train on mats laid between the wooden stakes that mark the ring posts. Rubble and rubbish lie in piles nearby.

Da Silva showed promise and was fast tracked to Sao Paulo’s Olympic Training and Research Centre.

Under the tutelage of coach Guilherme Miranda, she is learning fast and Miranda believes that even though she has yet to face an opponent she has the potential to go far.

“She’s a rough diamond,” he said.

Miranda and Dos Santos understand that champions are few and far between and stress the project’s main aims are to ensure the kids stay in school, keep them active, and teach them discipline.

The message has resonated with the disadvantaged children and Da Silva has become a trailblazer who revels in explaining the finer – and not so fine – points of boxing.

“I pulled a big tyre today,” she tells wide-eyed friends after one training session.

“It was a really big one, from a truck, I think. I ran up and down the stairs 10 times. And you know those big oval tracks you see on the Olympics? I ran round that.”

(Reporting by Andrew Downie; Editing by Toby Davis)

Source Link Boxing-Boxing offers escape valve for favela children in Brazil

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Soccer-Ronaldo had to leave but sale opens new cycle, says Juventus director
  2. UK consumer morale wilts under cost-of-living crisis: GfK
  3. Vietnam delays reopening resort island over low vaccination rate
  4. Stocks rebound on progress toward U.S. debt ceiling resolution

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • A Whale Protected A Scientist From A Huge Shark. A Year And 15 Days Later, They Were Reunited
  • This 600-Year-Old Inca Building Was Designed For An Incredible Acoustic Reason
  • Up To 90 Percent Of People Have This Health Condition. Just As Many Have Never Heard Of It
  • A Forgotten 19th Century “Vortex” Model Of The Atom May Help Explain Why The Universe Exists At All
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, But Don’t Expect MAHA Action
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction
  • “It Seemingly Put On An Otherworldly Show”: Watch As This Beautiful Deep-Sea Octopus Glides Gracefully Through The Ocean
  • Have You Heard About America’s Government Cheese Caves? They’ve Got Over 600 Million Kilograms Of The Stuff Stashed Away
  • There Could Be A Surprising Health Benefit To Having Gray Hair
  • New Answer To The Fermi Paradox? Cognitive Horizon Hypothesis May Explain Why Aliens Haven’t Contacted Us
  • What Happened When Patient B-19 Was Given A Brain Stimulation Device And A Button?
  • The Ice Age Squirrel That Enabled A Plant’s Resurrection 31,800 Years Later
  • The First Video Game Came Long Before Pong And Was Invented By A Manhattan Project Physicist
  • Monster Hoaxes In The Age Of AI: Seeing Isn’t Believing Anymore
  • Everyone Thought This Ancient City Was Destroyed By Plague. A New Analysis Says It Never Happened
  • The “Mind’s Eye” Doesn’t Focus Like Our Vision, Even For People Who Have One
  • Strep Throat Or Sore Throat: What’s The Difference?
  • Reptiles “Pee” Crystals, But What Are They Made Of? Scientists Wanted To Find Out
  • A Vaccine For Stomach Ulcers Might Be On The Cards, And It Could Fight Off Cancer Too
  • Only One Place On Earth Now Remains Mosquito-Free As Iceland Records First-Ever Sighting
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version