In late 2022, Roberto Geraldo da Silva, known as Robertinho, founder of the Esperança e Vida Association, was in the mission's bakery, literally with his hands in the dough, when someone came to tell him that the engineer who was installing solar energy panels wanted to talk to him.
As he was kneading the bread dough, which today feeds the people helped by the mission, he asked the engineer to come to the window. The news that the engineer brought filled Robertinho’s heart with joy and gratitude to God: The electrical energy that he was using at that very moment was a great gift of nature, generated entirely by the sun! A work of God!
Here begins another chapter in the history of Esperança e Vida Association, which was born in the heart of this native of Minas Gerais 33 years ago - a divine inspiration and call to help AIDS patients in the terminal stage of illness and in situations of social exclusion.
Since then, the project has grown tremendously and, today, it also cares for recovering drug
addicts. More than 3,500 people have been helped by the mission. But like every non-profit
organization which depends on the good will of donors to continue existing, the difficulties are many, and with Esperança e Vida it is no different. Every month, the worries are the same: - fixed costs such as salaries, light, water, and other various expenses that must be paid in order for everything to keep running.
One of these large expenses was the electricity bill, which every month was around 10
thousand reais. In order to reduce expenses and be able to invest in other projects, a
partnership with AbmthS was formed in June 2022. AbmthS invested in the installation of a
solar energy generating system that would meet the needs of the mission. This system was
installed and started working at the end of last year.
In one month of use, the energy bill decreased about 90% and the expectation is that it will be zeroed, making the house where the patients are served, totally self-sustaining in power generation!This is Robertinho's big goal: to make the mission totally self-sustainable.
Trusting in Divine Providence, but working to overcome the difficulties that arise, Esperança e Vida continues to transform the lives of those who pass through the mission. Those who are chemically dependent are helped to get their lives back and reinsert in society. Other profoundly marginalized brothers and sisters with terminal illness are cared for with compassion, and offered a dignified encounter with themselves and with Christ, through the Catholic faith.
For Robertinho, the mission does not stop. He now strives to increase the fruits of this newest of the many projects of the mission - the bakery, where Robertinho is also the baker hoping to increase the association's revenue in another step towards sustainability! And from his hands come tasty cookies, cakes, panettones, and breads which, besides ensuring the sustenance of those helped by the mission, also remind us of the "Bread of Life", Jesus, who first inspired Robertinho and, to this day, keeps alive in his heart the love and resilience needed to help those in need - as he calls them, his “sons and daughters”!
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