Seventeen-year-old Tatiane da Silva, known as Tati, lives in City of God, the Rio de Janeiro slum made infamous by an Oscar-nominated film of the same name. While critics praised the gritty film for exposing the brutality of Brazil's drug trade on its poor, Tati is not so enthusiastic. She got little out of the film deal besides a bad reputation. Now when she says where she is from, she is likely to be ridiculed or brushed off. "You shouldn't have to be embarrassed to say where you are from. It's not right," Tati complains. "People should know that there are many good things in the City of God." One of them is the Casa de Santa Ana (Santa Ana's House) where Tati takes part in an innovative project that joins two unlikely generations -- the above 65 and the below 18 -- in transforming the community.

Casa de Santa Ana is the brainchild of Maria de Lourdes Braz, a leader with a vision for seeing that senior citizens were a force for good in the City of God. Likened to a "daycare center" for senior citizens, the Casa de Santa Ana provides over 120 sixty-and-over members with access to health services, social and educational activities and a solution for families who don't have a way to care for their seniors on their own. It also brings young and old together in singing, percussion and dance activities that bridge the generational gap. The first of its kind in Brazil, Casa de Santa Ana turns seniors into leaders in their community and resource to its young people.

Age-old Problems

Nearly 10% of Brazil's population is over 60 and the country is experiencing an aging trend. Brazil is one of the world's most unequal countries with the UNDP estimating that the richest 10% of the population controls 46.7% of the wealth and the bottom 10% only .5%. In Brazil, where social security and health services for the country's poorest are non-existent or precarious at best, its growing over-60 population is increasingly vulnerable.

Universal health care exists in theory but the poor state of public health services means that low-income senior citizens often suffer from preventable illnesses and ailments, and the deplorable state of the publicly funded old-age homes just accelerates the aging process. In Brazil, the neediest people in the over-65 age group are eligible to receive social security payments, whether or not they have paid into the system. But the restrictions and bureaucratic delays mean that only a small fraction of them actually receive government support. "For the many families that qualify, the paperwork is so cumbersome that many seniors begin the process of requesting their payments but die before they get it. Senior citizen rights exist in theory but not in practice," says Lourdes, director and founder of Casa de Santa Ana.

While families are obligated by law to care for their aging members, few have the means to do so. For those just trying to make ends meet, having an elderly family member with special needs can be financially overwhelming. Cases of mistreatment and neglect of senior citizens occur regularly. For many families, the only option may be a state-run old-age home that acts more like a depository than a center for care. Private clinics and in-home care are reserved for Brazil's small wealthy class.

In 1991 Lourdes created another way when she came to the City of God and partnered with 17 senior citizens to open the Casa de Santa Ana. "Many families hadn't known how to care for their seniors, but through the services and the Casa de Santa Ana, we changed that and made it possible for seniors to stay with their families."

A Different Kind of Daycare

Lourdes immigrated to Rio de Janeiro from the poor Northeast region of Brazil and struggled to put herself through school to become a social worker. While interning at state institutions, she saw first-hand how senior citizens were denied not only their rights but their dignity. She heard about a church-run senior citizens' center in the City of God neighborhood, ranked fifth in poverty among Rio's districts, which was being shut-down because its building was falling apart. Lourdes visited the community and joined forces with then 65-year-old Nancy Lomeu da Silva, Tati's grandmother and leader of the senior's group, to open a whole new kind of center that put seniors at the helm. As Nancy remembers, "Us old people used to think that life was over after 60, but now we know and other know that seniors have a lot to offer."

Lourdes' first feat was not an easy one. She had to convince partners that investing in the elderly is good for making social gains in the community. A recurrent problem in Brazil, as in other countries, is that most donors see seniors as part of the past and opt for supporting projects that help children who are "the future". Lourdes, however, realized that seniors as well as young people are important to changing the current situation of poverty and violence in urban slums.

Lourdes pitched her project for providing health services to senior citizens to a foundation that invests in improving daycare centers. In an innovative stroke, she likened the services to daycare for seniors. As Lourdes describes it, "The foundation rep had never heard of something like that before. The concept was the same but the target group older." She got the grant and Casa de Santa Ana was in business.

Living Longer and Better Lives

And what is the business? It is a community-based model for providing low-income senior citizens with health and social services. Forty senior citizens spend their days at the Casa de Santa Ana and another eighty come and go from the organization's second location, Casa de Geralda (Geralda's House), participating in literacy and music classes, exercise and self-help groups. Both centers engage seniors in activities that promote healthy lifestyles and prevent problems and complications that come from aging to extend the quality and length of life. Lourdes and her professional team of psychologists also hold activities for family members to improve relations with their seniors. "People say you die when your time comes but that's a lie," says Lourdes. "You die from hunger and lack of support from others. People are dying too early." Casa de Santa Ana is changing this, providing services that enable seniors to live longer and better lives.

A key element in work of Casa de Santa Ana is ensuring the dignity and autonomy of its senior members. When seniors arrive for the first time, they meet with trained staff to help identify special needs and learn about the center's menu of activities. During a brief "getting-to-know-you" phase in which seniors try-out the center's offerings, staff members work with each senior to understand his or her interests and helps make suggestions for activities that may be helpful improving her health and well-being. But it is up to seniors to decide what is best for them.

Companionship is also important part of this better life. Julia, age 73, says, "when I was alone at home, I missed people. But now that I come here, I can talk with the girls. I can talk more freely than at home and we laugh a lot here. This place gives me freedom."

Over 300 seniors like Julia have been directly served by the project.

A Different Path for Young People

Perhaps most innovative is that Casa de Santa Ana is how the center forms links between generations, making seniors mentors and resources to the young people of the City of God. The center provides a series of mixed activities for youth and seniors including a chorus, samba music classes, chess and dance. It also is "safe space" where youth can come together to create their own initiatives like a theater workshop Tati started-up a few years ago.

Tati has seen the inside of old-age homes and sees the difference Casa de Santa Ana provides. "Here people are enjoying themselves and have friends. Here you can make friends with someone who is 100 years old." Tati sings along side her grandmother, Nancy, in the organization's senior-youth chorus that has performed to Brazilian and international audiences in places she never dreamed she'd go.

In a neighborhood where promises of high pay and fame hook adolescents into the drug trade, Casa de Santa Ana offers another path. Adriano, age 16 and member of the chess team and chorus describes how he and his friends used to have nothing to do and would play in front of the drug dealers' selling points. Sometimes, the traffickers would call them over, asking them to go buy them a coke, letting them keep the change, just to rope kids in and make them beholden to carrying out bigger and bigger "favors". But Adriano's friend Jefferson told him about the percussion and singing classes at Casa de Santa Ana and lured him in another direction. "If I hadn't gotten started with Casa de Santa Ana, I'd certainly be trafficking," says Adriano matter of factly.

Jefferson, too, has Casa de Santa Ana to thank for where he is today. When Jefferson, now age 14, lost his mother a year ago, he was angry and started going with the "wrong people" but staff at Casa de Santa Ana intervened and got him to come back. Now he works, goes to school and doesn't miss the Tuesday night Chess classes. "I won't say that there are no bad things going on in the City of God but not all kids do bad things," says Jefferson. "I don't know what I will do when I grow up. . . but I know that what I do do will make my grandmother proud."

Spreading "New Age" Homes to Other Communities

Rather than an old-age home, one participant called Casa de Santa Ana a "new age" home reflecting the new life it brings to seniors. The project has attracted the attention of local government officials, Brazilian NGOs and international organizations. Lourdes has told its story in Cuba and Holland and has helped other communities in Rio and in other cities replicate this new way of serving seniors. Lourdes has created partnerships with local universities to teach their students of public health and gerontology a new way of working with seniors.

Partnerships and support from national and international foundations are particularly important to Casa de Santa Ana since the minimal government support it receives falls far short of covering operating expenses. Lourdes laments the government's excessive red tape and time-consuming hoops that cause payment delays of often 3-4 months. According to Lourdes, "by the time you get all the documents you need in order, the first ones are already expired." In contrast, Lourdes cites the partnership with Yale University's Alumni Chorus that provides around $8,000 a year to support the Senior/youth chorus in City of God. They found out about the Casa de Santa Ana through one of its other supporters, U.S.-based Brazil Foundation that mobilizes Brazilians and others to support development projects in Brazil. "Yale believes in what we are doing. They ask us about our progress and we tell them. They come visit us and see for themselves. There is a trust in what we are doing." Other international partners include the Holland-Brazil Foundation and Ashoka which named Lourdes one of its social entrepreneur Fellows in 1998.

Despite these important partnerships, Casa de Santa Ana still struggles to keep the house up and running. Some of the activities between seniors and young people have been suspended due to lack of resources but Lourdes is not giving up. Though funder bias against supporting projects for senior citizens persists, she hopes to engage senior citizens of Brazil's small but powerful upper classes in partnering with their peers in poorer communities.

Lourdes sees that her capable staff depends less and less on her for everyday activities and so she plans to spend more time helping spread the model to other communities and other countries. She realizes that one cannot simply spread carbon copies of the project. Each community will implement it in their own way. But there are key elements that Lourdes wants to spread like the power of decision-making of senior citizens and their role as partners in the project's development, the inter-generational connections and the high attention to quality health care and social services provided. "The key is realizing that everyone here has something to give". At Casa de Santa Ana, the seniors, staff and young people are doing just that. Tati is giving her voice and her energy. Nancy is giving her caring and humor. Lourdes is certainly giving it her all.

To learn more about Casa de Santa Ana and know how you can contribute to its work, visit their website.




Contributed by Claire Fallender, an international development consultant with expertise in the area of social entrepreneurship and youth development. In addition to work in Latin America and Africa, Claire has spent five years in Brazil supporting the work of social entrepreneurs with Ashoka Innovators for the Public. Claire is currently completing a master's degree in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

To read another Global Envision article by Claire Fallender about social entreprenuership in Brazil, see Changing Tides: Building Human Capital in Rio's Largest Slum. To read a Global Envision article about globalization and Brazil, see Globalization and the Sex Trade.



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