In São Paulo’s Vila Nova Esperança, a threatened favela turned a trash-strewn hillside into a 0.5-hectare community garden, and in doing so, rewrote the script on what “survival” looks like in a city where 84% of favela homes have no open space.
The project began in 2013 when resident and community leader Maria de Lourdes “Lia” Silva rallied neighbors to clean up their settlement after years of eviction threats tied to environmental protections. What followed wasn’t just planting, it was a grassroots transformation: environmental education, food sovereignty, women-led leadership, and a tangible lift to health and dignity.
The garden now brims with basil, lettuce, beetroot, and trellised passionfruit. Volunteers take home harvests; the rest is sold affordably within the community. A kitchen launched in 2018 prepares healthy weekday meals for 200+ families, while workshops, sewing, crochet, and cooking with “PANCs” (non-conventional edible plants), help women build skills and income.
The garden even seeded a clay-and-wood community library and new employment opportunities through São Paulo’s urban agriculture program. For a place once written off, it’s become a prize-winning model of a “green favela.”
What makes this truly noteworthy today is its bottom-up, women-powered approach to resilience. In a dense city with rising housing pressures and climate risks, this community staked its future on green space that feeds, teaches, heals, and binds people together, an antidote to both eviction and invisibility.
As urban planner Theresa Williamson notes, “You get these ripple effects that are really strong when the community gardens are run collectively by women.” The ripple effects are everywhere here: mental health benefits, fewer hospital visits thanks to medicinal plants, kids growing up around soil and books, and neighbors who vote to keep the garden when new construction beckons.
The risk is real, legal pressure to relocate persists, and residents still live with uncertainty. Yet the garden’s impact is undeniable: it helped win time and visibility, brought services like water, sewerage, and paved roads, and proved that informal settlements can actively protect the environment they’re accused of harming.
Why it matters: Cities around the world are grappling with affordability, density, and climate. This story shows how everyday leadership, often by women, can turn minimal space into maximal resilience, nourishing both bodies and hope.
Read the full story for the people, the stakes, and the practical wins that made this possible: BBC Future.
