CEPAS — A Hope in the Middle of the Favela

There are places one never forgets.

Not because the buildings are impressive.
Not because the place appears beautiful in any ordinary sense.
But because people there try to hold on to something deeply human under difficult conditions of life.

CEPAS was such a place.

In the middle of the favela area outside Vitória in Brazil stood this simple health and study centre:
Centro de Estudos e Promoção em Alternativas de Saúde.

The name almost sounded larger than the building itself.

For the building was simple.
Concrete walls.
A worn courtyard.
Warm rooms with open windows.
People coming and going throughout the day.

Yet early on I felt that CEPAS represented something far greater than a health project.

It represented hope.

When people in Europe imagine favelas, many first think of violence, poverty, and crime. And yes — these realities existed there as well. The area was marked by high levels of violence, unrest, and deep social problems. Many families lived under extremely difficult conditions.

But this is not what I remember most strongly.

I remember the people.

Women sitting outside their homes talking together.
Children running through the narrow streets.
The smell of food rising from small kitchens.
Music always seeming to exist somewhere in the background.

And in the middle of this:
CEPAS.

A place where people were still trying to build something together.

Professor Pedro Fortes, who founded the centre, made a deep impression on me. He did not primarily appear as an academic in the traditional sense. He was more like a builder of communities. A person who had decided that knowledge needed to remain close to life itself.

I think this was what I loved most about the place.

The university did not merely stand above society.
It walked into the streets.

Medical students from the university visited families in the favela as part of their education. They went from house to house, speaking with people about health, living conditions, work, children, and everyday life.

There was something beautiful about this.

Not romantic.
But deeply human.

I believe many of the students were changed by these encounters.

Suddenly they were no longer sitting only with books and theories. They were sitting inside small homes listening to people whose lives were very different from their own.

Sometimes we sat at simple tables covered with plastic cloths.
Other times outside in front of the houses.
The coffee was strong and sweet.
People spoke about illness, work, children, and worries.

But often they also spoke about hope.

This surprised me.

Perhaps I had expected more bitterness.

Instead, I often encountered warmth.
Humour.
Care.
Hospitality.

During one home visit we arrived at a small shack where an elderly woman lived alone. She possessed almost nothing. Yet before we left, she returned carrying a plastic bag filled with mangoes that she gave us as a gift.

I still think about that moment.

For it was as though the entire logic of modern society had suddenly been turned upside down.

The one who possessed least gave the most.

Not because she had abundance.
But perhaps because community still remained a necessity in her world.

In many modern societies, people live close to one another yet separated.
In the favela, people often lived tightly together — for better and for worse.

They shared unrest.
But they also shared life.

Perhaps this was precisely why CEPAS mattered so much.

It was not only about health.
It was about presence.

About showing people that their lives still possessed value.

In Norway we are often deeply concerned with systems, efficiency, and professional boundaries. These things matter. Yet in Brazil I began to understand that social work and health work are also about something more fundamental:
to be humanly present.

To return.
To remember names.
To sit down.
To listen without hurry.

Perhaps this is something modern societies are gradually beginning to lose.

For human beings need more than services.
They need to experience that they still belong to the world.

Martin Buber described the difference between I–It and I–Thou. Some encounters reduce people to functions or cases. Other encounters open a space in which a human being may appear as a person.

I believe CEPAS tried to create such spaces.

Not perfect spaces.
Not spaces without conflicts or limitations.
But spaces where people could still experience themselves as seen.

This made a deep impression on me.

Perhaps because I also saw how poverty easily makes people invisible.

When human beings over time are defined through lack:
lack of money,
lack of education,
lack of status,
lack of opportunities,
society gradually risks overlooking the person behind the categories.

But in the favela I learned something important:

Human dignity does not necessarily disappear with poverty.

It may continue to live in small actions:
in the way people share food,
in laughter between neighbours,
in women caring for one another’s children,
in music continuing to flow through the streets in the evening.

And perhaps also in a small health and study centre located in the middle of an area marked by violence and unrest.

Sometimes I think back to those warm afternoons there.

To the students walking between the houses carrying notebooks in their hands.
To children following us through the streets.
To Professor Pedro speaking with people as though he had all the time in the world.

There was something quietly hopeful about the place.

Not hope in the sense of grand political visions.
But hope as practice.

Hope as something human beings do.

I believe this is important.

Modern societies often speak about hope as emotion or ideal. But in the favela I learned that hope is often far more concrete:
to open the door for someone,
to share food,
to ask another person how they are doing,
to return the next day.

Small actions.
Small signs that human beings have not yet been abandoned.

Perhaps this is why I still think about CEPAS.

Not because the place solved every problem.
It did not.

The violence continued.
The poverty continued.
Many young lives were lost.

Yet in the midst of this, some people still tried to hold on to something fundamentally human.

Care.
Dignity.
Community.

Perhaps it is precisely such places that hold societies together without the world fully noticing.

Not only the great institutions.

But small places where people still meet one another as human beings.

In the middle of the favela.

In the middle of unrest.

As a quiet hope.

Care.

Dignity.

Community.

OpenAI/ChatGPT created the illustration of Professor Pedro Fortes in conversation with me in a mango garden.