Favela da Paz, led by Claudio Miranda, is a project situated in Jardim Ângela, one of the favelas (slums) of São Paulo, Brazil, which the UN declared in the 1990s to be one of the most brutal neighborhoods of the world. They’re a cultural project providing education in music, media production, self-sufficiency and more, and aiming to turn their neighborhood into an urban model for sustainability and nonviolence.

More than twenty years ago, Claudio Miranda began to gather friends to make music with tin cans, as they couldn’t get real instruments. At a time of daily shootings in the neighborhood, creativity was the alternative to violence and fear he found, something that allowed him to stay with hope and serve empathy. Claudio started the successful band Poesia Samba Soul, and runs a cultural project which offers hundreds of young people the chance to learn musical instruments and to get to know a life beyond drugs and violence, building community and serving ethical values.

Today, Favela da Paz is an umbrella of transformational projects under the frame of art and culture, sports, sustainability, entrepreneurship and social equity, involving youth and the surrounding community, creating the possibility to thrive in the slums.