Inspiring Brazil's youth

Employees from our Brazil Alumina operation have taken steps to help inspire youngsters from one of Rio de Janeiro’s most disadvantaged communities. 

Last year, we announced that we’d sponsored the Orquestra Maré do Amanhã project - an initiative which aims to provide students living in the city’s Maré neighbourhood with the opportunity to learn music, discipline, team work and collective citizenship.

With an estimated population of 130,000, Maré is a low-income area in which shootouts and confrontations between organised crime groups and the police are commonplace. 

Our people at Brazil Alumina have now taken the partnership one step further and have invited some of the project’s young musicians to learn the Aluminium industry.

The activity aimed to enhance the relationship between our employees and the project’s participants by providing an overview of our operations in Brazil and demonstrating how Aluminium is used in different industries and products across the globe.

Employees also shared their own experiences to inspire the project’s youngsters.

The Orquestra Maré do Amanhã project was established by Carlos Eduardo Prazeres in memory of his father Armando – a renowned orchestra conductor – who was kidnapped, robbed and killed on his way to collect one of his children from school in January 1999. 

Mr Prazeres’s murder was never solved although his car was recovered in Maré which led the authorities to believe that the killer resided somewhere in the surrounding area. 

Reflecting on the project, Carlos said: “It was in Maré that my father´s dream was interrupted, and it will be there that I will make his dream raise again.”