Afro Reggae: The future

Cultural Group Afro Reggae (CGAR) is a Brazilian non-governmental organization that offers alternatives to crime and drugs to youths from the slums of Rio de Janeiro through cultural activities. Since its founding in 1993 by a group of young men from the slums, CGAR has enjoyed great success in expanding its activities and attracting significant funding and attention from the international community. From the beginning, CGAR was able to attract youths involved in drug dealing. The idea was to incorporate them to the group and help them attain professional skills as part of the project, thus helping leverage and expand CGAR's results. CGAR had to break through the negative social prejudice against these young men and women, especially those formerly involved in crime. For 2007, CGAR had 69 projects under way, spread through four slum communities in Rio, including ten music bands, two circus groups, one theater troupe, and one dance group. Yet even with a direct impact on 2000 people every year, and perhaps a much larger number of people indirectly, it was very far away from reaching the more than 1,500,000 inhabitants of slums and other poverty areas in Rio, or the many millions of slum dwellers in Brazil as a whole. Should CGAR continue growing, thus making a larger contribution to the reduction of poverty, violence, and racial prejudice in Brazil? What risks would expansion pose? How should CGAR grow? Where would the resources for growth come from? If it didn't grow, what would happen to CGAR?