The difficulty of making ends meet in rural areas of Brazil is one of the reasons for migration within the country. Small farmers leave their homes to crowd into the favelas of the megalopolis, where they can no longer afford the quality of food they used to produce on their land.
About 1.5 million people live in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, known as the Cidade maravilhosa, or city of wonder. Electricity, running water, and sanitation systems are often lacking in those informal settlements long neglected by the government, and life is tough for those who live in them. Food insecurity is one of the most significant divides between the favelas and wealthy areas of Rio: In the slums, many rely on government-subsidized schools, food banks, or junk food to feed their children.
“My idea was to democratize real food, so to allow everybody to be able to access it,” Tchelly says.
In 2011, Tchelly gave her first course on how to cook with food scraps to six other housekeepers in her slum, which led her to create a social enterprise called Favela Organica. Her goal was to teach others how to repurpose food waste produced by Rio’s markets, and to learn how to grow produce on their balconies and in their yards. Tchelly’s project relies on the idea of an integrated food cycle: growing food, utilizing it all, and creating compost with what’s left to fertilize a garden.
