Viva a Vida aims to empower substance-abusing street children by providing them with support to understand and address their addiction as well as the educational tools so that they have the necessary skills to build productive and safer lives for themselves.

Viva a Vida - UK arose out of the work of a dedicated group of ladies who, right from the beginning, financially and morally supported the objectives of the Brazilian charity Viva a Vida.

Founded in 2003, Viva a Vida in Brazil provided the only therapeutic residential drug rehabilitation programme in the metropolitan region of Salvador aimed at the needs of street children and low-income adolescent boys addicted to crack and other drugs. Viva a Vida achieved national recognition for this work in June 2006, when they were awarded a Diploma of Merit by the Brazilian governmental National Anti-Drugs Office (SENAD) in a ceremony presided over by the President of Brazil.

The name for the charity, "Viva a Vida", was chosen from a list of suggested names enthusiastically sent by adolescents in a drug treatment centre in southeast Brazil. The phrase "Viva a Vida", put forward by 12 year old Anderson, can mean "Live Life" or "Hooray for Life" and was chosen because we thought that it captured the essence of what our work aims to be about: cultivating a passion for life in adolescents who, for various reasons, have made themselves numb to it.

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Viva a Vida - UK would like to thank the following people for volunteering their services towards the construction and maintenance of this website: Pedro Zunzunegui for designing the website; Maria Luiza Hanley and Thomas Hanley for designing the logo; Thomas Hanley for maintaining and updating the website and Luiz Alberto Silva Santos for the photographs.