Eu Quero Ser
Eu Quero Ser, meaning “I want to be”, began UmRio’s campaign portfolio. With the support of our first partners, João Brazil Municipal School and the Morro do Castro community, this project aims to improve academic performance and prepare young people for university entrance exams, address age-grade discrepancies, and provide young people in the community with entry level professional opportunities.
At UmRio, we understand that having the best teachers, the most concentrated students and the most equipped classrooms is not enough to guarantee young people from favela communities stay in school and complete their secondary education. In fact, many in Morro do Castro face significant financial pressures and only by confronting these pressures directly are we able to get these young people to return and remain in the classroom.
In 2018, Eu Quero Ser was relaunched as an education and employability programme which aims to improve academic performance and prepare young people for secondary school and university entrance exams while simultaneously promoting their professional development. By equipping Morro do Castro’s young people for the job market and providing work experience and scholarships to enhance their professional trajectories, Eu Quero Ser works to confront the financial realities that force young people to choose between the classroom and the working world.
We are especially grateful to the BrazilFoundation, the Hees Family Fund, and Martinus Robert Schreuders for supporting this initiative from its beginnings in 2017.
Project Rescue
Project Rescue is our social assistance-oriented programme which seeks to successfully re-enrol young people who have abandoned education and motivate them to remain, progress in and complete their primary and secondary education.
Project Rescue takes an integrated and intersectional approach to addressing the root causes of truancy and dropping out, considering the compounding factors that impact disadvantaged young people in informal and marginalised urban communities in Rio de Janeiro into abandoning their schooling.
Project Rescue’s Objectives include:
● Reducing school abandonment and truancy;
● Promoting youth leadership opportunities;
● Improving academic performance;
● Identification of and support for learning disabilities;
● Improving soft-skills;
● Fostering a safe environment;
● Promoting goal-setting and life skills.
Project Rescue operates in all UmRio partner schools and includes incorporation of programming across all Five Pillars.
We are especially grateful to our Project Rescue sponsors: EMpower–The Emerging Markets Foundation, Beyond Sport and the Rexona Breaking Limits Programme.
UMRio Contra Covid-19
Between 2020 and 2022, we implemented the UmRio Contra Covid-19 (UmRio Against Covid-19) campaign.
These years were marked by a global pandemic which had profound repercussions on the lives of the children, young people and their families and communities we had been serving for years. It is no secret that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequalities, exposing the most vulnerable to tremendous interruptions in their already limited access to health, education and basic needs. In Morro do Castro in particular where 20% of our UmRio participants had no internet access at all and 60% had low-bandwidth, the sharp shift to online learning would have long standing implications on educational attainment in the favela.
As a result, this campaign delivered internet access to over 150 people in our partner community of Morro do Castro and loaned tablets to young people without or with outdated technological devices. UmRio Contra Covid-19 also included a food security initiative which delivered 17 tons of food in the first 9 months of the pandemic, translating to 38,550 meals. Furthermore, we expanded our scholarship and employability programming under this campaign, reducing the number of UmRio participants living below US$1 from 106 to 11 in Morro do Castro and bringing half of UmRio’s participants living below the extreme poverty line above the poverty line.
UmRio Contra Covid-19 also included the complete transition of all Five Pillars of UmRio’s programming from in-person to online, where UmRio participants were able to continue to stay active, educationally motivated and supported, professionally mentored, and cared for in terms of their physical and mental health.
We are especially grateful to our UmRio Contra Covid-19 sponsors: the BrazilFoundation, the Hees Family Fund, the Fell Family Fund, and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz).
Level the Playing Field
Level the Playing Field draws on our successes in addressing acute inequalities and disadvantages facing young people in 2020. The 2020 pandemic brought with it deepening inequalities and the increased threat of abject poverty and hunger around the world. In 2020, our data showed that 79% of the young people we work with were living in extreme poverty, 38% were living on less than US$1 per day and 68% did not have enough money for food.
Furthermore, Brazil’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was cause for global concern. The original £75 per month of federal emergency aid granted to the most vulnerable households at the start of the pandemic was cut by half in August 2020 and abandoned completely in January 2021. As a result of this, between January and March 2021, UmRio had seen a 200% increase in students and young people in partner communities reporting food insecurity and even hunger. This was further compounded by the reality that UmRio experienced a 31% reduction in funding as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, our Level the Playing Field remains! This Campaign supports 30 students and their families (a total of 139 people) living on less than US$1 a day in the UmRio partner community of Morro do Castro. These students (and their families) have been identified as being at a heightened risk of hunger, child labour, digital exclusion, school abandonment and other risky behaviours such as recruitment into drug-trafficking and organised crime.
Projeto ler
Projeto Ler began in 2024 as our response to the rise of illiteracy and widening of age-grade discrepancy in partner schools resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of combined stay-at-home directives with digital exclusion, the impacts of the global pandemic saw a widening of the gap in learning for children across partner communities. Moreover, with only 15% of children having effectively participated in remote classes delivered during the pandemic, data from Niterói City Council has shown that 60% of children have returned to school illiterate.
Projeto Ler enables teachers to advance through the school curricula while UmRio helps students who have fallen behind to catch-up before reintegrating them into their original classrooms. The programme fills this void for partner schools and teachers alike by providing specialised reading, writing and comprehension support.
Since 2024, UmRio has enrolled 31 students at our partner school Escola Municipal João Brazil, and within four months, there was an average of 8.6% literacy rate improvement across all students. 32% of youth enrolled in our literacy programme have advanced to reading at age-grade level within four months, and were reintegrated back into their previous classrooms, now able to read, write and learn the material they were previously missing.
We are especially grateful to our Projeto Ler sponsors: the BrazilFoundation, the Fell Family Fund, and Martinus Robert Schreuders.
Project Blue
UmRio’s Project Blue serves as a cultural exchange opportunity for select participants of our programming. First launched in 2018, Project Blue was built to bridge the young people of UmRio with the United Kingdom. Project Blue utilises our relationships with Oxford and Cambridge Universities to bring two of the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world closer to Morro do Castro. This connection has helped raise participants’ self-esteem, strengthened the community’s network and broadened the opportunities available to the young people of UmRio. While Project Blue had a transformative impact on the six young people from Morro do Castro who traveled to the United Kingdom between 2018 and 2019, Project Blue’s impact stretches far beyond the youth involved, with hundreds of young people referring to Project Blue as a motivational driver to remain in school and engaged in extracurricular activities.
Project Blue remains an integral programme organised and executed by UmRio. Following a turbulent period marked by the global pandemic, UmRio saw increased rates of extreme poverty, reduced optimism, heightened levels of depression compounded by limited opportunities for young people throughout the Morro do Castro community. As part of UmRio’s post-pandemic programme expansion, we aim to re-launch Project Blue in 2026.
UmRio is a registered charity in Brazil (CNPJ: 22.075.882/0001-97). Donations in Brazil are tax deductible through Lei de Incentivo ao Esporte.
Donations from UK taxpayers can be made through OneRio, a UK-registered charity (Charity No. 1172036) eligible to claim Gift Aid.
OneRio supports UmRio’s charitable programmes through grant funding, strategic advice and governance oversight.
