Recife, Brazil, carries a reputation as a hub for sex tourism, and it is also where two women started nonprofits aimed at breaking the cycle that pushes children onto its streets and traps women in violent homes. The film follows Adriana, who left home at six and had her first child at eleven, as she describes street life and the recovery program in plain, matter-of-fact terms. It traces the violence at home that drives kids out in the first place, and shows the programs working from both ends: reaching kids on the street and addressing the family dysfunction that produced them. Group therapy sessions combine work with the mind and the body, a method the founders call the pedagogy of affection. Cecy, one of the founders, recounts the fable of the lion and the hummingbird that inspired her to start the program, a small story used to explain a strategy built on doing what one person can, repeatedly, rather than waiting for a larger fix.