When Renata Castro joined the Avenues community with her 3 children, she didn’t expect to find what she encountered: a commitment to profound social transformation in a socially vulnerable community right next door. She soon volunteered, alongside other moms, to get involved in ongoing community engagement projects. And it was through these moms’ work efforts and those of moms from neighboring community Jardim Panorama that, in her own words, “we transcended”. A relationship of mutual trust was sealed between these women who – despite the great social and economic divide that may have otherwise kept them invisible to each other – found common ground in having the interests of their young ones closest to their hearts.

This is how PACE came to be: Parents Avenues Community Engagement. They collaborate whichever way is needed and are emotionally and morally bound to Coletivo Panô, the next-door women’s group, where they were slowly accepted as friends and allies. Stronger, more organized, confident, self-reliant, the women from Panô are unequivocally filling in the leadership gap of their community. “This is what makes me most proud: kids here learn, from a very young age, about social responsibility. I haven’t seen this in other schools, but I see it at Avenues”.