Top Picks

Description

The grounds were impressive, six buildings in all and enough dorm beds to hold up to 100 guests. Ney informed us that the Centre had another site a bit further off, exclusively for female patients, as isolating the guests by sex removed another distraction. The Centre receives no state funding and survives entirely on private donations, mostly from community-run church congregations. The Centre has a cafeteria, church, a large vegetable garden, a fishing pond and chicken pasture. Ney explained that the Centre provides its own labor, with the patients in charge of growing and preparing their own food, as well as maintaining the farm equipment. In exchange for food and shelter, the patients must refrain from the use of any substances. This includes cigarettes: a marked departure from rehabilitation programs elsewhere, where smoking addiction is viewed as the lesser of many evils. Here, no one smoked. Had they relapsed and sought a cigarette or something harder, the sheer isolation of the Centre would be their greatest obstacle as it sits 5 miles from Niterói and is only serviced by a lone bus which runs intermittently during the day. Read full article here: http://bit.ly/LrfhEV