A community’s voice and future: Escola Municipal Professor Edson Pisani improves lives in a favela through education and advocacy

Escola Municipal Professor Edson Pisani, a government kindergarten, primary and adult literacy programme school in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, has been a long-standing source of transformation and advocacy for its students and the Aglomerado da Serra, one of the largest and oldest favelas in Brazil. With its ability to mobilise students, families, and neighbours, and to coordinate with the government and local leaders countless times to educate, discuss, and propose actions for improvements in the area, the school is a proven voice for change by promoting sustainable living practices, reducing garbage, and improving the community’s quality of life.

For over 100 years, the Aglomerado da Serra favela has lived without any guaranteed basic rights, such as treated water, sanitation, and transportation. In the early 2000s, the favela saw several public structural works under the Vila Viva programme, which included a new road dividing the Aglomerado da Serrae. In 2013, the programme proposed a second phase, which included widening the street where the school is located and displacing many families.

To get the project architects and engineers to attend community meetings and thereby gain access to the project information, the Escola Municipal Professor Edson Pisani quickly organised the community, gathered signatures, and then partnered with the Federal University of Minas Gerais’ (UFMG) Faculties of Architecture and Law. Ultimately, this saved the many families from being removed, as initially proposed.

In the meantime, the Vila Viva programme had left debris all over the community, creating dangerous areas and causing an increase in garbage, pests, and diseases. It also created an issue around the community’s water sources. Here again, the school partnered with the UFMG’s School of Architecture to create the Water in the City Project, which studied the water problems and mapped out water points.

The construction work opened up a two lanes avenue, which would finally make it possible to accommodate a bus in the favela. More concerned about cars from the wealthy neighbourhoods, the municipality refused to create the bus line. The school then, in partnership with the Tarifa Zero movement, mobilised the community, organised meetings, collected more than 4,000 signatures and carried out numerous other actions to put pressure on the municipality. After two years of struggle, the bus line was created and connects the favela to the subway, generating more access to health, education and employment, thus guaranteeing the right of the favela population to come and go.

In the last year the school focus has been on urban waste management due to lack of facilities. Working with the School of Architecture at UFMG, alternatives have been designed and tested, ranging from the creation of gardens, urban furniture, and games. As a result, abandoned cars were removed from the school's street, the alleys where students live are cleaner and the school is moving towards zero waste production.

If Escola Municipal Professor Edson Pisani wins the World's Best School Prize for Community Collaboration, it intends to further improve the community's quality of life by implementing more sustainable initiatives, providing better access to education, and creating more opportunities for students to engage in community service.