JOHN DREXEL
1998 HUMANITARIAN AWARD
Maria Helen Drexel Association
Brazil
John Drexel has spent decades working on behalf of the 600,000 children living in the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1973, he founded the Maria Helen Drexel Association, a non-profit organization that addresses the problems of abandoned children. The association places abandoned children in seven qualified foster homes which together house 56 children. Drexel also is involved in the Association to Support the Boys and Girls of the Street and the Order of Brazilian Lawyers’ Commission to Protect and Defend Human Rights of Children and Adolescents. He has helped to increase local, national and international awareness of the unjust suffering of forgotten and abandoned children.