Braga Youngsters with lack of opportunities

Braga is one of the youngest European cities, with development levels and standard of living much higher than the national average, presenting itself as a city full of opportunities for young people.

Nevertheless, there are young people, identified as vulnerable to social exclusion, that cannot reach those opportunities.

They were born and grew up in Public Housing neighbourhoods, i.e. disadvantaged places from an urban and a social point of view, marked by poverty, characterised by scarcity of infrastructure and a profoundly negative symbolic burden.

On one hand, these youngsters are soon called to assume family responsibilities (take care of younger brothers or sisters, household duties, contribute to the family income budget etc.) and are forced to emancipate themselves from their parents too early (this being particularly true for specific ethnic groups).

On the other hand, school failure (69,4% of the youngsters that attend school, have failed at least one year) and early school leaving (77% of the youngsters that have already left the school system, have not completed compulsory education - at least 9 years of school), contribute to reinforce the elements leading to the permanence of these children and youth in poverty and socially disadvantaged situations.

Excluded from school, too young and without sufficient qualifications to get a job, these youngsters just cannot break this chain.

Moreover, the exclusion processes in those areas, favour the occurrence of several social pathologies. Nearly 30% of these children and youngsters live in drugs environments (traffic and use) in their domestic space, 27% suffer alcohol abuse and 31,7% live with relatives whose life stories are marked by delinquency and offences.

Living everyday with misery, scarcity of opportunities and resources, low self-esteem, lack of social, cultural and leisure equipments can push into “fatal destinies” the children and youngsters that live in those disadvantaged territories.