Associação Comunitária Monte Azul

The Associação Comunitária Monte Azul is a Brazilian NGO that is active in three Favelas in the southern part of São Paulo, M'Boi Mirim / Campo Limpo.

The Associação Comunitária Monte Azul today has more than 260 employees and receives around 70 overseas volunteers per year, 20 of these from other countries, in particular Germany.

The Favela Monte Azul, which has around 3000 residents, was established in the 1970s during the period of rapid urbanisation due to the rural depopulation from North-eastern Brazil and the provinces Minas Gerais and Paraná.

Through the project, by means of which Ute Craemer wished to awaken some social awareness amongst her students at the Waldorf school, she came into contact with the children of the Favela.

One of the principles of the Associação Comunitária Monte Azul is to not just communicate knowledge but rather to facilitate a comprehensive education for their children and young people that enables them to take their lives into their own hands, encouraging them to change the harsh realities that surround them.

In all of its three centres, Monte Azul has theatre and conference rooms as well as libraries so as to give people access to cultural content.

Besides this, they run a music school where children and young people from the Favela are able to learn string instruments, to play in an orchestra and to sing in the choir.

In Monte Azul's Ambulatório or clinic, the residents of the Favela as well as those of the neighbouring communities receive treatment free of charge.

It aims to improve the poor level of obstetrics care for low-income families and resist the extremely high rate of caesarians in Brazil.

By organising community projects the residents of Monte Azul cleared the area of garbage, introduced re-cycling and built a sewerage system.

Associação hires drama teachers and actors who stage professional productions in theatre workshops with the Favela residents that they normally perform twice a year.