Urban Renewal in Portugal

The Santegaos kindergarten in the northern Portuguese city of Gondomar appears to be just like any normal nursery school. But the children here come from broken homes and impoverished families.

This special kindergarten class was made possible by the European Union and these funds have changed these childrens' lives, said Angela Patriarca, a social worker who helps coordinate the EU program that funds this kindergarten.

"Without it, the schools wouldn't have the funds to do this kind of project," Patriarca said.

The school is part of a larger project to turn around two neighborhoods in northern Portugal beset by serious social and economic problems. Here, kids learn how to make a bed, eat properly and not destroy the toys they play with. Though this may sound pretty basic, these are things these kids often don't learn at home.

"They go back home and they don't have stimulation, they don't have anybody to work with them," Patriarca said.

The list of problems is long

Many of these children live in poverty, with parents who are unemployed, have substance abuse problems or simply little hope for the future. They are from two of Portugal's poorest neighborhoods: one in Portugal's second largest city Porto and the other just bordering it, in the municipality of Gondomar.

"It's a dirty place with quite a lot of old people mixed with young people who don't have the right conditions in terms of school, social or cultural activities," said Christina Azevedo, vice president of the organization which administers EU projects in northern Portugal.

"There are lots of drugs involved and you see a lot of violence," Azevedo said. "Sometimes it's so bad that the police have difficulty going in and trying to put things in order."

Under the EU's urban renewal program, Brussels has allocated some 10 million euros ($13 million) between 2000 and 2006 to fund projects that could turn these two impoverished areas around -- or at least start the process.

It was a big job, especially since the list of problems was so long: long-term unemployment, few businesses, isolation and poor infrastructure. It wasn't a matter of simply throwing a lot of money at repainting run-down apartment blocks or putting in a few playgrounds for kids, Azevedo said.

"I think the first real objective is elevating self-esteem," Azevedo said. "We have to make people aware of where they live and the problems they have." She said this could help a sense of community to grow.

"We're trying to make people try to figure out what the priorities are for themselves," she said.

Giving kids a chance to play

The strategy has been to start young, and stop some of the patterns that put many of these kids on a very rocky path to the future.

In Porto, in the Carreiros neighborhood, kids from a social housing project benefit from the PlayBus, which comes to the area a few times a week.

The bus is a rolling playground of sorts. It's full of toys and games that the kids go wild about. Before it went into service as part of the EU program, kids here either had to play in the street or stay at home, which wasn't always the best place for them to be.

"Usually these children only see violence in their homes and surroundings and these kinds of projects show them that is more to life than that," said Anna Maria, who has been teaching in the area for 20 years. She said it gave them the opportunity to simply play.

"I've known these children for a long time, before the neighborhood was renovated and the PlayBus came along," she said. "The whole atmosphere has really changed since the project began."

Bringing senior citizens back to life

Poor planning back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when most of the social housing in the area was built, meant disadvantaged communities were highly concentrated in these two areas. Businesses stayed away, poverty got worse, buildings got run down and social problems just escalated.

Before the new roads the EU money put in, isolation was a big problem. Illiteracy rates are high among older people -- especially women. Many of them spent much of their lives as housewives, never leaving their immediate neighborhood. They didn't have much to look forward to except an old age of loneliness and inactivity.

An EU-funded swimming pool changed this. For many senior citizens at the pool's water gymnastics course, taking a dip was a new, and initially frightening experience, according to social worker Liliana Rodrigues.

"In the beginning, it was amazing how they looked at the water," Rodrigues said. "They were afraid of it." She said they had never had the opportunity to swim in a pool before.

But now that they've had a taste, they can't get enough, especially 73-year-old Filomena Barbosa.

"It was my first time in a pool and I was really scared," Barbosa said. "But when I got used to it, I started loving it. I wish we could do it more often."

More time and money is needed

This phase of the EU's urban renewal project has now officially come to an end. It ran until the end of 2006. While some 10 million euros in EU funds -- and another 5 million euros from Portugal -- have been poured into the area, there is still a lot to be done, said Claudia Costa, who directs the Porto side of the project.

"Even though it's lots of money, the problems are big," Costa said. "We can have some success with some projects, but it's impossible to see great changes."

There simply hasn't been enough time, she said. To tackle these kinds of deep-seated challenges -- unemployment, lack of skills, hopelessness -- more than six years and likely more than 10 million euros are needed.

Costa said she worried that as the money runs out, some of the programs will have to be shut down. She and her team are looking for private partners to keep some of the projects running.

Still, she said the EU urban renewal effort had borne fruit -- despite all the Brussels bureaucracy associated with it. It has gotten the ball rolling slightly at least, in an area where for decades, stagnation was the order of the day. Now, the challenge is to keep that momentum going.