The Gallery
All text and photographs copyright of Our Forgotten Children
Brazil
In a glaring juxtaposition of rich and poor, the Paraisopolis favela sprawls across a deep gulley and up the hillside. At the top can be seen the gleaming condominiums of Sao Paulo's super-rich.
From their part, the wealthy can look down on a maze of telephone wires strung between shanty homes, open sewers and barefoot children - all bearing grim testimony to the fact that this, for many, is the end of the line. This is where the dispossessed live. And yet, in Paraisopolis, every window box is filled with flowers.
Brazil, on the surface at least, is a very child-friendly country. Its health-care system and advances in fighting AIDS have brought worldwide acclaim. But nothing prepares you for the sight of so many families living hand-to-mouth, crouched together in shameful poverty, with no lifelines in sight.
Miguel lives with his wife and four children in a home that he built himself, out of wood and corrugated iron. His oldest son, Magdiel, is 14 now, and proud to play the role of surrrogate dad, while Miguel is on the streets, looking for work.
Quiet and concentrated, he shows his younger siblings - Bruno, 8, Bruna, 6, and Ila, 2 - how to make a home-made kite. Then, on the hillside, they stand together holding the line, and watch as it soars into the air, high above the teeming favela.