Brazil looks forward to 2016 Olympics, but should their government be looking closer to home?

Drugs, poverty and violence affect tens of thousands of Brazilian children and teens

Vila Alianca, an unofficial section of Rio de Jeneiro,  is an enclave of violence and organized crime, and one of the regions that the Brazilian government has not decided to try to pacify prior to their hosting of the 2016 Olympics.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Vila Alianca neighborhood is a major center of the Rio de Janeiro drug trade. Armed guards patrol the streets at will, watching for police or rival gang members. They monitor all outsiders who enter their turf, and do not take lightly any threat to their business.

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The Brazilian military has intervened in 38 communities in the capital of Brazil, paving the way for so-called permanent Pacifying Police Units (UPP), who are slated to improve security.

This heavily armed community is not one of them, and if the military were to try, it is expected there would be a great blood bath.

One man has been trying to help those caught in this dangerous life, Nanko van Buuren, a Dutchman whom has traveled across Rio since 1985, tries to help the poor and marginalized get out of violent and criminal lifestyles.

He runs the Soldiers Never More project, which uses sports, arts and counseling to help over 4,000 "child soldiers" who otherwise face an early death or a prison sentence.

Most of these children enter the drug trade when they're very young or in their teens, but about 80% will die before they reach 21.

Buuren believes what he is doing is truly helping this incredibly violent, impoverished and forgotten part of the world. "Nearly all [drug traffickers] would get out tomorrow if they could," he said during an interview with the Guardian.

One of these drug traffickers, who has turned his life around and is helping to do the same to other child soldiers is a man who goes by the name Andre, now in his 30s.

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He left his gang and now runs a soccer program for Brazilian youth as part of Burren's project-which regularly employs these reformed gangsters as coaches and mentors.

"We show them another perspective on life-that they have other possibilities," he said.

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