A teenager at Brazil wonders Christmas tree with a background of garbage dump full of vultures. The iconic photo sparked such a wave of solidarity that Gabriel Silva’s family was able to see their dream come true: to buy a house.
The photo of the thirteen-year-old teenager, immortalized by the collaborator of the French Agency, Joao Paulo Guimaraes, shows him with the plastic tree in his hands, with a background of piles of garbage and vultures, in Pinieirou, in the state of Maraniaou (northeast). It shocked the whole of Brazil.
The photo, just before the end of the year holidays, became a symbol of the misery of millions of families, the misery that spread even more in Brazil due to the crisis brought by the pandemic of the young coronavirus.
“I am very happy. Previously, we lived in a brick house, without any comfort. “Now we have a nice house,” the teenager, who spends several hours after school with his mother in a landfill every day, told AFP, helping her to collect trash recyclable materials.
In their old house, he slept on the ground with his mother and three brothers. From the inside, he could see the sky from the gap between the wall and the ceiling.
But thanks to the transmission of the photo with the Christmas tree, an amount was collected via the internet that allowed the family to get a house.
“I did not imagine that photo would cause all this. I was very surprised “, admits Gabriel Silva, proud that he now has his own room in his new house.
On the property he bought a few weeks ago, the family has three rooms, kitchen, parking. And “above all, electricity, running water and a shower,” says the mother, Maria Francesca Silva, 45 years old. “Before, we had to travel long distances to get bucket water to wash,” he added.
Over 2,000 people contributed money and the amount raised reached 80,000 reais (around 14,000 euros). According to Ms. Silva, the house cost 49,000 and “all that remains is to put in some tiles and buy some furniture.”
Now, Gabriel Silva hopes to be able to fulfill another of his dreams, to become a “professional footballer”.
According to the latest data from the Brazilian Institute of Statistics IBGE, 24.1% of the 213 million Brazilians lived below the poverty line in 2020, as broadcast by Agence France-Presse and relayed by the Athens News Agency.
The state of Maranhουo, where the Silva family lives, is the one with the highest percentage of residents in extreme poverty (almost 20%), according to a UN report published in 2019.
Source: News Beast
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