ProLiteracy in Rio de Janeiro

Following the CONFINTEA conference in Belem, Brazil, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro to research a new Brazil program to include in ProLiteracy’s partnership with the Latin America Citi Foundation. In addition to productive meetings with CEPIA (a women’s rights organization), ELAS (social investment fund), Ford Foundation and Banco Real, I was pleased to connect with two organizations – Rede ASTA and Coopa Rocha – that match Citi’s literacy and microfinance focus. Both of these innovative programs empower women of Rio’s poorest Favelas to create and expand micro businesses to support their families. ProLiteracy will help them add literacy and social action components to strengthen these business efforts. In connection with these programs, I had several opportunities to visit and conduct participatory training/research meetings with program leaders and participants in the favelas. These ramshackle slums are perched upon the scores of steep massive rock mountains that dominate Rio and its surroundings. The communities that range from 10,000 to 100,000 residents started as shanty slums on terrain too steep for roads or businesses. To enter these favelas is to step into a complex maze of narrow passageways that wind and intersect for miles. Water and electricity sources typically consists of a tangled spaghetti of hoses and wires to pirate resources from far away public pipes and power lines.

Heartfelt discussions with women participants underscored the painful realities of their lives in the favelas. Dora Machado described their daily battle with large, ferocious rats that kill their dogs. “The rats get into our house every night and eat anything that’s loose. They eat holes in the mat that Cintia (her six-year old daughter) sleeps on. Cintia prays each night that God will give her a bed so she can sleep off the floor where the rats won’t run all over her each night.”

Women speak with desperation about the water hoses that have been cut off so they haven’t had water for three months. Marta Guilhon says she and her children beg to fill their buckets in neighboring favelas and wash in the public toilets several blocks away. Every mother has had traumatic encounters with armed violence involving fights between rival gangs and even the police. They spoke of experiences being held at gunpoint, having shots crash through their houses, children caught in crossfire, guns held to their own heads, bullets shot through their windows and doors and assassinated bodies in front of their houses or in the water supply.

Each favela is controlled by a gang and nothing happens in that neighborhood (including the work of the NGO or a visit by an outsider like me) without permission from the gang leaders. Gang members range in age from 9 year olds to early twenties. Few survive beyond their twenties and leave the gang either by being killed or moving far away. Even in these wrenching conditions, hope and resilience can still take hold. With hugs and tears, women expressed great excitement at the prospect of working together through the anticipated literacy and micro-finance programs.
I’m delighted that ProLiteracy and Citi Foundation are looking for opportunities to work in these communities of intense need.