In Brazil, the Solidarity Center and its union partner provide enrichment activities that keep at-risk teens off the street, encourage them to stay in school, and prepare them for job opportunities.

	Eremim participants in Afro-Brazilian cultural workshops perform during the opening march at the 2006 World Forum on Education in Nova Iguaçu, a marginal community on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

The Eremim project, launched in 1999 as a joint initiative between the Solidarity Center and the Metal Workers Union of Osasco, Brazil, works to reduce child labor by bringing supplemental language, mathematics, and traditional culture classes to at-risk youth in an industrial suburb of São Paulo. Situated in the same community as the union’s headquarters, Eremim integrates play into the learning process through such activities as the Afro-Brazilian practice of capoiera, which combines dance, music, and martial arts. Computer and media skills instruction offers further enrichment.

Eremim, which translates roughly to "my child" ("ere" is "child" in Yoruba, a West African dialect), not only encourages young people to stay in school, but also helps them build the skills they will need to secure decent work as adults. Eremim alumni have gone on to study at the university level and find career jobs in fields such as popular education and media. Without the program, many of these young participants would have few opportunities besides informal, poorly paid jobs that would give them little chance to develop long-term skills.  

Over the last ten years, Eremim has built on its union support to become a self-sustaining organization with other contributors. Many past Eremim participants are still closely involved, and some are now staff members. Eremim also has developed a partnership with the local government to operate a cooperative enterprise that produces uniforms for the local schools, providing steady employment to many mothers of Eremim participants.

Eremim was recognized with a 2006 Banco Itau-UNICEF award, and the work of the Osasco Metal Workers Union now serves as a model for union-led programs aimed at eradicating child labor. In 2008, the Solidarity Center and the Brazilian trade union Força Sindical began a program for bringing the Eremim model of community development and popular education to a community in Salvador, Bahia, in northeast Brazil. Like Eremim’s programs in Osasco, the Salvador project, which will continue through 2010, is built on a foundation of strong appreciation for the community's Afro-Brazilian culture.