The history of the João Paulo II Educational Centre is a great love story that has lasted for over 20 years in the community of Novos Alagados.

In 1995, after reading the news of a massacre of homeless people, mostly 12-year-old children, occurred in Rio de Janeiro (later become known as “Chacina da Candelária”), an Italian lady, deeply shocked and concerned, called her friends and family to express her desire to do something to support Brazilian children in situations of abandonment and vulnerability.

The future founders of the Centro Educativo asked for advice from their friend and priest Don Luigi Giussani, founder of the Catholic movement “Comunione e Liberazione”, who suggested them to take a trip to Brazil to learn about initiatives carried on by the members of the movement in the country, that’s how they arrived in Salvador. During a visit to a kindergarten in the area of Novos Alagados, in the Enseada dos Cabritos, they saw children playing and precariously running  on the pile dwellings and in the mud. Deeply moved by what they saw, they decided to start their project and give their contribution exactly there, in Novos Alagados.

Once back in Italy they decided to get involved and help Fondazione Humano Progresso in the creation of two paediatric clinics near two community nursery schools, the John Paul II kindergarten and São José Operário kindergarten. The two clinics began to monitor extremely undernourished children, to treat the diseases they contracted due to poor housing conditions, and to follow and monitor motherhood and child-care in children’s first years of life.

In 1998, during another visit by Fondazione Humano Progresso, a new question was raised: “What will become of these children after living kindergarten?”.

The answer to the question came from some institutions and their collective interest and efforts to create a safe  space in which children and young kids of elementary and middle schools could develop and improve their school performance and could have the opportunity to carry out activities in an environment conducive to integral and protected development from the local growing violence. Fondazione AVSI (still a partner of the Centre) was among the institutions that contributed to the project, the construction and the management of the building in the first years.

During the construction of the John Paul II Educational Centre, ended in 1999, the first after-school activities were provided to a group of 20 children in a small space inside the John Paul II kindergarten. In 2000, the new building was operational: we went from about 140 children in the first year to approximately the present 500 students (the number of recipients has increased steadily year after year).