O habitar de crianças e adolescentes vulneravéis: projecto tipo de um Centro de acolhimento para crianças e adolescentes vulneráveis no meio rural

Abstract

The vulnerability of children and adolescents in Mozambique is an alarming reality, exacerbated by various factors such as extreme poverty, hunger, political conflicts, wars, abandonment, and orphanhood. These challenges are particularly intensified in rural areas, where access to essential resources and specialized services is highly limited. In rural areas, there is a significant shortage of shelters, which leads many children and adolescents to leave their families and migrate to urban areas in search of better living conditions. In these areas, they are often exposed to various vulnerabilities, such as living on the streets. Furthermore, the few shelters available for children and adolescents in vulnerable situations often fail to meet essential criteria, either in the planning of their projects or in the adequacy of physical spaces to the psychosocial needs of those being cared for. A large portion of these spaces are adapted by Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which often results in insufficient or makeshift solutions. This work examines this issue in the Mozambican context, highlighting the conditions that aggravate vulnerability in rural areas and the insufficiency of adequate local support. To carry out this study, various shelters were visited, where interviews, surveys, and studies of physical spaces were conducted. The aim was to gather guidelines that would support the development of a prototype project with better spatial qualities, contributing, through architecture, to the well-being of children and adolescents in vulnerable situations.