Year 10 Geographers enjoy talk from the Favela Foundation
Patrick Gibbs and Flavia Franco, the trustees of the Favela Foundation came in to talk to Year 10 Geographers about life in and citizens of South American Favelas.
Patrick and Flavia both have first-hand experience of living and working in favelas. They talked about perceptions of favelas compared to the reality, breaking down assumptions and bias. For example, most of the communities in these favelas are strong, peaceful and middle class with 70% of residents saying they don’t want to live anywhere else. They highlighted the challenges that these communities face and the projects that they are working on to support them.
Speaking about the talk, Elyssa said, “I really enjoyed it! I did not know much about the term favela beforehand, and the talk really helped me widen my awareness. The ‘stigma versus reality’ statistics were really interesting.”
Arushi said, “I heard so many stories of amazing people out in Brazil living in favelas, from building an art school to empowering women and girls.”
Anusha said, “It was really interesting and I enjoyed seeing how some of the stereotypes surrounding favelas are actually false, for example how there is a lot less illegal business going on there than people assume, and also looking at the statistics of the data collected about the favelas which contradicts the common stereotypical image of a favela.”
Thank you to Patrick and Flavia for giving such an interesting talk.
