Casa da Cumbuca was literally raised on the trail of dreams, in the Unikebradas Project in Brazil, out of five women who inspired us to believe that it is possible to live our dreams. Connected by Bianca’s heart, she encouraged us to build our own project and supported a collective of four young people, from apprentices to Master-Apprentices.
Casa da Cumbuca was born from a collective of four young people, facilitators of knowledge, autonomous, radical, and free individuals. We dared to co-create and found our space, so that we could finally live our own story. Thus, our proposal is to offer Casa da Cumbuca, a Cultural Center born from our dream and hope for a better world. We seek to value and enhance ancestral and popular content and local practices in the favela to engage young people, generate opportunities, and strengthen community, cultural, artistic, and social ties, as well as care for the environment. We inspire other young people with Grito da Favela, which is an exchange of cultural, artistic, and local knowledge, because the favela is a place of abundance, not scarcity. We create opportunities to build our perspectives on life and reflect on ancestral and coexistence issues linked to intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic relationships, based on popular culture, art, culture, and care for the environment.
We started Casa da Cumbuca in August 2025, with three young people offering workshops in theater, visual arts, and popular education, and with five young participants. Every 15 days, there was a workshop on gambiarra (working with reused materials, trash, and discarded items). Over the months, we have seen it take shape and structure, with other young people joining in.
During this period, we worked in the workshops in a horizontal manner, always in circles, seeking to listen to everyone’s opinions and encouraging participants to make decisions in a deliberative and collective manner. We used cooperative games, nonviolent communication, and cooperative pedagogy.We sought to listen to the participants and understand the themes that made sense to them. Together, we built work proposals, where it was beautiful to see people co-creating their processes in a legitimate, organic, and autonomous way.
From this autonomy, a permanent workshop was born, created by three young people, where each week, each of them offers their skills to other young people. They held their own themed parties, with decorations and clothes made in the workshops, collaborative snacks, and movies. It became a community space where young people could create their own content, working freely and responsibly.
What I loved most is being able to see young people who were once lost, with no prospects in life, abusing drugs and alcohol, suffering from depression, contemplating suicide, engaging in risky sexual behavior, without joy in life, who are now coming back to life, living together and being together, breaking paradigms of violence and prejudice, being autonomous in their own stories and able to forge their own paths of learning, being able to see their inner smile expressed to the outside.
I always discover that I know nothing. That I am constantly learning. That times change, people change, that everything transforms. I am coming to understand that I truly live as a master-apprentice, where I learn a lot from others, especially how to listen and respect diversity.
We started with a space that was completely empty, with only walls. On August 2025 we started energizing and furnishing it, installing shelves, cabinets, an electric kettle, a coffee maker, two computers, a printer, a flip chart, two whiteboards. Buying teaching materials, office chairs and plastic chairs. It has become a very welcoming space, full of life and harmony. Our project is not over yet, it is still a baby. We will continue in 2026. I dream of a better world, one that grows with financial autonomy, new partnerships, and lots of love. What hit me (and us) hard was the lack of money. We are very abundant, however, many young people face food insecurity, lacking food in their homes and the means to purchase educational materials.
“Queremos um mundo melhor
que ninguém fique para trás
que um acolha e caminhe com outro com Amor
Que a equidade seja respeitada para todas as diversidades”
Lei do Amor, por Bianca
This post is based on Bianca’s report for 2025 Germinators Projects.
Bianca Najara Cámera is the guardian and mentor of Casa Cumbuca. She acts as a mother, a friend, and an advisor for youngs, as they commonly say.
