Business

favela business: brazilian folks turning their creativity into opportunities

July 20, 2017
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In a country like Brazil that is experiencing a huge financial and political crisis, unemployment rates and the lack of opportunities in the formal labor market are noteworthy. Of course, the black community is the one that suffers most.

However, black people have demonstrated a creative energy that, even in difficult situations, creates opportunities where they don’t exist and turn the “favela economy” into a force of resistance in difficult times.

Favela Business is a YouTube channel that not only highlights the hustle of these young, poor, black folks transforming their reality, but also encourages these transformations. The idea was prompted during the filming of a documentary about thrift stores called Original Favela (we featured them here), but turned out to be something much bigger than expected.

Working from the age of 13, the 19-year-old creator of the channel, Jeferson Delgado, wants to show how people from the favelas, mostly black people, are positioning themselves in the market by creating their own local business.

Making all the footage with simple equipment, often lent by friends, Jeferson and Heloisa Ferreira, the channel’s editor, all believe that the project can influence and encourage lots of people to strive for their goals by using their creativity to reinvent themselves in situations of adversity that every person from the favelas lives.

With no money coming from the project yet, Favela Business is opened to receive support for acquiring better equipment and create more spaces for other entrepreneurs from the outskirts of the big cities of Brazil.

Watch Favela Business below on YouTube (in Portuguese) and follow them on Facebook!

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