Monte Azul, Brazil. The Associação Comunitária Monte Azul is 45 years old. The Brazilian non-governmental organization runs an integrated slum development project on the outskirts of São Paulo. Its sources of inspiration are anthroposophy, Waldorf education, and anthroposophic medicine. An interview with co-founder Renate Keller Ignacio.
What was the founding impulse behind the initiative?
In 1979, Ute Craemer, Paulo Roberto Ignacio, and I started a unique social project in the Monte Azul favela, which has profoundly changed the lives of thousands of people. Waldorf teacher Ute Craemer initiated the work by opening her home to the favela children and organizing play afternoons together with her 12- to 13-year-old Waldorf students. There, these two social realities were able to get to know and understand each other. Building bridges between different realities is a motif that still inspires us today.
What does the daily work of the organization look like?
In the meantime, the Associação Comunitária Monte Azul has grown and has transformed two peripheral slum areas, in particular, into humanized urban districts. There is the Casa Angela maternity home, known throughout Brazil, nurseries for the little ones, a small Waldorf school, after-school care for children who go to public school, pre-vocational workshops, cultural centers, a biodynamic school garden, a health station where a multidisciplinary team practices anthroposophic medicine and successfully makes it accessible to this impoverished section of the population. The Associação also works with the São Paulo Ministry of Health and manages 18 health stations in a residential area where around 300,000 people live. The aim is salutogenesis and primary care.
What are your favorite memories from the 45 years that the organization has existed?
My favorite memories are the weekly meetings with the women from the favela, where we trained them as Waldorf educators in the 1980s, and the community work on the weekends to improve the housing situation in the favelas. These joint working days usually ended with a party with music, dance, and poetry.
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Translation Charles Cross
Image Activities of the organization, photos: Associação Comunitária Monte Azul
