One + February 2011 - (Page 81)

Giuliana says. “But Franco was a big manager, and they decided to build Fiat in Brazil. They wanted him here, so it was a great opportunity. We arrived and fell in love with [the place].” Giuliana pauses for a moment to wipe her eyes, which have ﬁlled with tears. After Franco was appointed to the position of president of Fiat Brazil in the mid 1970s (later promoted again to head the company’s Latin American operations), the couple began to receive a stream of important visitors from Italy, regional governors and heads of powerful companies and inﬂuential organizations—all of whom would later prove invaluable contacts upon the establishment of Para Ti. When Franco and Giuliana moved to Rio in 1978, a friend introduced the couple to the area of São Conrado on Rio’s southern beaches where there were just two houses set among the lush rainforest. “We found this house and fell in love with it. It wasn’t ﬁnished, so we renovated it, there was no electricity or running water—we got that from a well—and it cost us a fortune to put a phone line in!” Not long after that, emigrants from Brazil’s poverty-stricken rural areas who had come to Rio to look for work began illegally building shacks on the hillside of the small valley. Slowly the favela of Vila Canoas grew to a community of 3,000, which would come to depend on Franco and Giuliana for support. “I remember a very cold night when two little girls without clothes came to our door,” Giuliana says. “They had been cared for by their grandmother, but the old lady died and they had nowhere to go. The leader of the community wanted to send them away, but I said no—we took them in. They spent two months here and then we took them to Italy. That’s how Para Ti began.” Franco retired from his position at Fiat soon after so he could focus on raising funds for the community, but he remained on board as a consultant. The couple realized that the streets were full of children not attending school. Their ﬁrst goal was to get the kids educated, but they needed birth certiﬁcates to enroll the children in school, and sometimes even their parents’ births weren’t registered. Giuliana’s ﬁrst task was to get them organized. The couple bought several houses next to their home, which they joined together, and in 1980 they established Para Ti with funds raised predominantly from Italy. They hired staff to teach typing, woodcraft, knitting and crocheting, and instructors to give the children tutoring they couldn’t get from home because their parents were illiterate or busy working. It didn’t take long for the Uranis to realize there were other problems that needed addressing. “During the heavy summer storms, the lights and electricity would go out and we would hear screams,” Giuliana says. “We would grab our ﬂashlights and go outside into the darkness and we’d see the mudslides and the shacks sliding down the hills like dominoes or a deck of cards.” Giuliana and Franco began to return to Italy more frequently to raise funds. Giuliana had a side project trading in beautiful Brazilian lace, highly sought after in Italy, and Franco was working full-time for Para Ti. They established a partnership with an Italian NGO, and their house became a bridge for Italians coming to Rio to develop projects. Soon, Para Ti was supporting or facilitating hundreds of projects, from a child sponsorship program, which currently feeds and clothes 400 favela children each year, to infrastructure projects ranging from home construction to sewage system installation. One of the Uranis’ greatest achievements was persuading the Ford Foundation to provide university scholarships. “Franco rejoiced!” Giuliana says. “We watched at least 50 kids from here graduate in engineering and IT. One, who completed an electrical engineering degree, wrote to his sponsor to thank him and said his goal was to raise money to start a project to help more kids go to university.” Pull Up the People Giuliana suggests we take a stroll up the road to visit her “masterpiece,” a daycare center where 30 educators care for 200 young children. On our way out, she shows us more of Para Ti. Aside from the classrooms and computer lab, there’s a playroom crammed with toys, a cubby house, colorful costumes and a Nintendo video game system two children are playing with great intensity. Across the corridor, kids play table tennis, and downstairs Giuliana points out some rooms that she plans to transform into bed-and-breakfast accommodations for people who want a taste of favela life. She hopes to develop more sustainable tourism projects that will beneﬁt Para Ti, such as a volunteer English-instruction program, but she won’t increase the number of tours—two per day is enough, more would be too disruptive. As we leave, we pass one of Marcelo Armstrong’s arriving tour groups. I ask Giuliana how the favela residents feel about tourists gawking at their kids and peering into their homes. “There is some perplexity from the adults,” Giuliana admits diplomatically. “But the children are interested in meeting people from around the world, and they love practicing their English. The tours also pay for their lunches.” The sweet aroma of fresh baked goods assaults our senses as we enter the fourstory childcare center. The place is big, bright and squeaky clean, its rooms ﬁlled with happy, healthy looking children who get ﬁve meals a day and a bath before they return home each night. The children come not only from Vila Canoas, but are also bused in from nearby Rocinha. As we stroll, locals stop to greet Giuliana and children wrap their arms around her. It’s like accompanying a popular politician on a meet-the-people walk. “She’s the First Lady of the favela!” my translator exclaims. She’s angelic as she places her hands on the heads of two tough-looking boys—they smile. Giuliana says she knows three generations of the community. “She’s so happy to live here,” says Roberta, who is developing her own incomegenerating recycling project for the community to keep the unemployed busy and away from drugs and crime. Unlike Rocinha, which is ruled by drug lords and is infamous for its drug trade, Vila Canoas is a relatively healthy favela with few drug problems. “Giuliana needs to live near these people and be with them,” Roberta explains. “She says on weekends she misses the voices of the children playing at Para Ti.” “I do! This is a life-long project,” Giuliana says, squeezing my hand, tearing up again. “This is what I live for.” LARA DUNSTON and TERENCE CARTER are a globetrotting travel journalist team currently based in the United Arab Emirates. mpiweb.org 81 http://www.mpiweb.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of One + February 2011

One + February 2011
Contents
Energy of Many
Impressions
The Productivity Cloud
Overheard
Agenda
MPIWeb Connect
Thoughts+Leaders
Events for Life
Gateway to the Future
Top Spots
It Was Not Interesting
Irrelevant
The Wrong Words
Up to Snuff
That’s Enough Facebook
Super Foods to the Rescue
Shoring Resources
Jack and Smoke
Accidentally on Purpose
Staying on Top of Tech
The Joy of Work
Plan to Run
Productivity on the Go
Angel of the Favelas
Your Community
Making a Difference
Until We Meet Again
MPI’s 2011 Meeting Guide to Canada
Contents
Banff Centre
Ottawa Tourism
Tourisme Montréal
The Buzz
InterContinental Canada
Caesars Windsor
Vintage Hotels
The Great Green North
Whistler, British Columbia
Meetings and Conventions Calgary
Scotiabank Convention Centre

One + February 2011