The Universal Language of the Village in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jul 26
3 min read

I’m sitting in the airport reflecting on my trip to Rio de Janeiro, and without question, the most impactful and rewarding part of my stay was visiting the favela.

A favela is a community built along the mountainside.

To reach the top, we took a cable car high above the homes and the community below.

Inside the cable car, I met a little girl who appeared to be about three years old.

We did not speak the same language, but she recognized warmth and love.

She showed me the boo-boo on her hand, and by the time she reached her stop, we were friends.

Children understand the universal language of love.

When I reached the top of the mountain, the first thing I noticed was a soccer field where children were playing.

That made me smile.

Then, when I turned to look down at the vastness of the favela, and something immediately caught my eye.

Right at the foot of the massive community was a rooftop daycare and preschool.

As an early childhood educator, I immediately appreciated a space created specifically for children.

The bright colors and clear space stood out in the midst of the rest of the favela.

While families work to sustain their homes and community, those adults are creating a place where children are loved, cared for, and given the opportunity to grow.

That’s what villages do.

We create the conditions where children can thrive.

As our guide continues to share the story of the favela community, I began to understand something that deeply resonated with my own work.

The community’s collectivism is often born from necessity.

You see, the favela communities many of the homes have zinc roofs that become dangerously hot during the summer and extremely cold during the winter.

During the hottest parts of the day, the homes become unsafe for children, so the children spend much of their time outside in the community.

Therefore, the community developed a shared understanding that every child belongs to all of them.

Toddlers and young children move throughout the neighborhood, ride the cable cars, and develop independence because the adults collectively accept responsibility for watching over them.

Tens of thousands of people live in the favela, yet community members know the children’s names, and the children know the adults around them.

As I listened, I realized I was witnessing a Top-Notch Village—a community of people had been outcast and underresourced and understood that protecting and developing its children required collective responsibility.

They graciously welcomed me into their community and allowed me to witness collective resilience and dignity.

As a Black American woman, I could not separate what I was seeing from my own understanding of history.

I listened as an Afro-Brazilian woman shared the story of her childhood, her family, and her community.

She described how, after enslaved people built much of the country, they were pushed to the margins when they could no longer be property.

Rather than disappearing, they built.

They took their ingenuity, their labor, their relationships, and their limited resources, and they created community collectively.

That is what stayed with me.

A community of people who refused to allow oppression to determine whether their children would grow up surrounded by adults who knew them, protected them, and believed they belonged.

Standing there, I realized that children in the favela and children in under-resourced communities throughout the United States need the same thing…

Adults who intentionally create the conditions where they can safely develop into who they were created to become.

That moment reaffirmed my life’s work.

I work for children.

I work with adults.

Because regardless of the country, when adults intentionally organize themselves around children, children gain the opportunity to spend more of their childhood developing their gifts instead of simply surviving.

Every child deserves a Top-Notch Village. ❤️🙏🏾🥰

Dr. El Brown is an early childhood keynote speaker, trainer, and engagement strategist who partners with Head Start, early childhood programs, and children and family service organizations to strengthen family engagement, support professional development, and build Top-Notch Villages™ where children and families thrive. ❤️🌰🌱🌳☀️

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