What We Do

ARCH provides funding and expertise to support high impact initiatives that promote children´s wellbeing in developing countries. Our first initiative is to support Recontar. Recontar is a family support project based in Florianópolis, Brazil. It offers direct, broad-based support to low income families during the crisis of a child's serious illness, using techniques developed and proven with familes from the favelas of Rio. Just as poverty and sickness march hand in hand, so they can be reversed together. Recontar's full name in Portuguese means "Child health retold". Nearly 20 years ago, pioneering paediatrician Vera Coderiro realised that her patients' life chances were determined not just by what happened in hospital, but what awaited them outside. The approach is radical - touching employment, training, housing, medicines, transport costs and psychological support - and it works. Alastair, in whose memory ARCH was established, was trustee of Vera Cordeiro´s Rio organization that pioneered this approach. Recontar will use this approach by supporting families over two years to develop and implement a multidimensional and integrated Family Action Plan to improve their living conditions in terms of health, income, housing, education, and citizenship. For many of these children, this is a difference between life and death - it’s as simple as that. From September 2008, Alastair’s widow Bebhinn and two young sons are in Florianopolis on the ground to set up and oversee the development of Recontar, which ARCH will support with approximately £200,000 over the next 3 years. The easiest way to learn about our first initiative is to go to Recontar´s website. You can also access Recontar´s three year social business plan. Bébhinn is also keeping a regular blog on the process of setting up and developing Recontar. To get an idea of the type of work Recontar does, watch this short video. We do not respond to unsolicited proposals.