Award-Winning Middle School in Penha Favela Hosts Gardening Collective Action Engaging Passionate Young Environmental Leaders
Two years ago, classes at the Brant Horta Technological Municipal School (GET Brant Horta), located in Penha, a complex of favelas and surrounding neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, resumed in a special way: with a collective action in the school’s community garden. This happened with the support of Vilson Luiz, a tour guide and environmental educator from Penha responsible for coordinating the project, and the Frente Penha collective.
On March 5, students, teachers and environmental partners came together in a welcome ritual for new students. The event, a March activity on the Sustainable Favela Network’s (SFN)* collective calendar, also brought together environmental volunteers, such as Edvana do Nascimento, a member of Ação da Cidadania; Mara Lúcia Araújo, a member of the Positive Women collective; Franklin Ramos, an environmental educator; Eliana Ramos, an entrepreneur from Edixe Accessories; Lucia Helena Barbosa, from the Transvida Cooperative; and Maria José da Silva.
The Environment as an Educational Tool As previously published by RioOnWatch, the Complexo da Penha region is one of the city’s main urban heat islands. Concerned about this reality, GET Brant Horta began raising students’ awareness by carrying out practical actions of care and preservation in the area surrounding the school, encouraging a sense of belonging.
During 2024 Environment Week, students and teachers organized a collective action in Ary Barroso Park to revitalize the previously underused site. Marjorie Guimarães, principal of GET Brant Horta, recalls: “We even did some planting there [in Ary Barroso Park].
The idea of bringing the community to the school or the school going to the community was to improve students’ behavior, so they understand why they should not destroy or break things.” However, the initiative was short-lived due to armed conflicts in the area.
This motivated the administration and students to create their own on-campus community garden in May 2024—both to continue what had started in the park and to make productive use of unused spaces in the school. Virgínia do Espírito Santo, geography teacher, shares how the project reaffirms the importance of collective, creative organizing between teachers, students, the community and projects within Complexo da Penha: “We asked them [the students] what we could do with the empty space we had on the school grounds and they said: ‘We don’t have a green space here in the school.’
So we thought: ‘Why don’t we build a garden, then?’ And they agreed.
We teachers made an estimate [of what we needed to start the garden] and purchased the materials. Then, Vilson got fertilizer from [waste utility] Comlurb to help improve the soil.
Some people from the NGO Sowing and Harvesting Friendship came to help, and the Serra da Misericórdia Integration Center, (CEM) came too, bringing supplies, seedlings and seeds. And then we got started.”
Ver essa foto no Instagram For principal Marjorie Guimarães, the garden has brought numerous benefits to daily life at the school, such as developing student leadership and improving performance: “We used to have students, for example, who never spoke to anyone at school. One of them went from being introverted to extroverted and even came up with the irrigation system [for the garden].
He’s an example of how there’s an emotional aspect to all of this, because he has a stutter and had to explain things in his own way. It was good for both his health and emotional wellbeing.
Others developed a sense of belonging, which encouraged them to stay longer at school and play games like ping-pong and volleyball. For us, that’s really great because it means they aren’t out on the streets.
The more restless students also come together in the garden, and we use it as a bargaining chip: for the most absent or disengaged students, we tell them they have to come [to school to participate in the garden]. As a result, their behavior has improved a lot.
I’m not saying it’s the [only] reason, but [the garden] helps, you know? We don’t reach all students, but we do pull some [away from disengagement] and from a disinterest in studying.”
With the support of the school and community, the students carried out a series of actions that benefited the entire school. Among these initiatives is an irrigation system for the garden that reuses water from air-conditioning units.
The system stores the water in a small barrel capable of supplying all the seedlings. There is a vertical garden growing small seedlings that are still germinating; they will later be transferred to the garden beds.
The irrigation system works by means of pumps that continuously circulate water from the bottom up. Two agroecological green roofs with light structures and quick-installation design were also added at the school; the netting and passion fruit leaves covering the garden came from the Green Roof Favela project.
This structure has helped create a cooling point inside the school, crucial on hot days. To further its socio-environmental mission, the school organized a fashion show in partnership with the Divines School and stylist Almir França, producing an entire collection from scraps of denim.
The event was attended by actress Gi Fernandes, a former GET Brant Horta student. The students also received recognition from the Prince of Wales at the Earthshot Prize ceremony at Rio’s Museum of Tomorrow on November 5, 2025.
The Brant Horta community garden‘s social media shows content produced by the students. The school’s official profile also features various other educational materials created by the students.
One of the most accessed posts on the school’s page is a tutorial in which children and teenagers teach how to make pouffes from plastic PET bottles. The school is also competing for the 2025-2026 Shell NXplorers Global Inspiration Awards, an international award that recognizes schools that mobilize young people to change reality through science, creativity and care for their communities.
It is nominated for the 2025 Best Sustainable Ideas category. Ver essa foto no Instagram Seeds and Their Fruits in Self-Taught Learning The garden has around 50 seedlings, distributed among edible and medicinal plants.
In addition, it also an autonomous and integrated learning circuit among the different age groups served by the school, as explained by Vilson Luiz: “There are very sensitive plants that die over the course of the year. It creates that feeling of, ‘Wow, we came here, planted them, and they died?’
Yes, but at the same time, others also grow. And it’s this movement of care that we need in order to do this work, this renewal.
This helps because it’s the [the youth] who have to do the research. It’s not a place that has an owner.
Everyone is the owner.” A veteran of the community garden and a former GET Brant Horta student, Matheus Daniel, who is now in his first year at the Heitor Lira State High School, also in Penha, shares how participating in the garden contributed to his self-care: “What impacted me the most was the care I learned to give to certain plants, many of which I didn’t know before.
I also learned how to make remedies from many of these medicinal plants. I have asthmatic bronchitis and learned to use herbs as tea, which really helps my cough.”
Nathally Hyara, an 8th grade student
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Fonte: Rioonwatch.
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