The Social Center of the Musgueira had its geneses in 1963, when a group of many volunteers stimulated by Jose Manuel of Rocha and Melo s.j decides “to lie down hands to the workmanship” and to support the population of what it would come to be the Quarter of the Musgueira North, more did not stop to conquer sympathetically and friends, known people and anonymous, that they have kept of foot an ideal and over all, have become it reality.

The zone of the Musgueira integrated, in the height, a great peripheral area of the city of Lisbon, left free of constructions for constituting zone of protection to the airport of the Portela.

This circumstance made possible the setting since 1961 of one raised number of families proceeding from differentiated places. All they came of dislodgement tax that if it arrested with natural catastrophes or for urban necessities.

The migration over all of the interior center and north of the country also was raised. The occupation had always to character of provisory.
The precarious conditions of habitability, the social lacks of the new residents and the difficulty of the CML in assuring to these families minimum acceptable conditions, had determined the intervention of other entities, nominated, of the Social Center of the Musgueira.

Jose Manuel Rocha and Melo obtained to together seduce a group of young volunteers and with them, dedicated themselves to more help it the most needed in the varied forms, since the repairing of tents, the supply of meals, the implementation of Rooms of Study, the organization of a Cooperative of Consumption, until the most diverse works of support.

The Social Center not only centered in the construction of some equipment but also in the mobilization of efforts to sensitize the competent entities for the necessity to create infrastructures in the quarter.

The promotion of the work enters the institutions of the Quarter, the meeting of partnerships, was always a present goal in day-by-day.
The mission continues to be the same one: the social promotion and human being, the qualification, the development, the learning in set, the integration.

Currently, and since 1985, it is presided over by the Pde. Alfonso Herédia, s.j. Account with 100 children in the Garden of Infancy and 20 in the ATL. The Center of Day receives 60 aged ones daily and the Home Service Support, supports 50 dependents. In the work with the young, they have Mediateca with multiple directed activities of not formal education about 200 young and provides to Rooms of Study the 50 young that finds a pertaining to school support of 5º to 12º year. The Center also keeps, a service of social attendance to the Community and promotes fields of vacation, shares of formation and innumerable projects.

The Social Center of the Musgueira while Institution that if wants to the service of a Community, lives at the moment a challenge and a hope: to come to have the conditions that they make possible to give to continuity to its project of promotion and social support to it to a Community, either it more it north or more the south.

INFANCY GARDEN

MEDIATECA
· Of the 11 to the 21 years
· Formative activities
· Socio-cultural activities
· Sporting activities