Paulo "Paulinho" Cerqueira

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Quitungo’s new community center. Paulinho is taking it one bag of cement and load of bricks at a time. Paulinho grew up in the housing project built for the former residents of Catacumba. His first job at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) was as a ‘parking attendant’. In the past six years he has been gradually promoted from parking attendant to head maintenance man to assistant to the chair of the Geography Department. The university lets him have the time off he needs for his community organizing.
Photo: Paulinho Six years ago, Paulinho managed to get enough money together to buy a plot of land in the favela Piquiri behind the housing projects. Since then, he and a group of friends have put all their extra money into purchasing materials for the community center and all their spare time into building it. "I’m going to name the center after my daughter," Paulinho says, "because I’ve had to take the food out of her mouth in order to build this place."

Paulinho has big plans for the community center. He wants to set up information technology, language, and job training courses. He wants it to have an after-school program. He wants to organize a children’s choir and have a samba band. He asks all the neighborhood’s children to collect empty plastic soda bottles and bring them to the building site. "I don’t know exactly what we will do with the bottles yet, but we’re going to start a recycling center in the basement and make them into something. So far, we have 600 bottles."

Paulinho, in his early thirties, knows the problems of his community well. "Lots of people, my friends, have given up and moved out - but somehow I’ve managed to stay and try and make things better." He already runs a escolinha de futebol (soccer camp) for young boys from the projects. He convinced some professional soccer players who came from the projects to volunteer to coach. He buys the kids’ breakfast because "they come for practice in the morning without having eaten anything - how can they play?"