“Rat kids” digging through garbage. Millions of people squatting “in huts amid sewage and sorrow”. “A world of youth gangs, violent crime and drug dealing” that represents a “no-go zone”. These were the descriptions of Rio’s favelas that appeared in the world’s media as the city geared up to host the Olympic Games in August this year.

But these images were exactly what activist Theresa Williamson had feared. After 16 years working with residents of favelas – the informal settlements that house nearly a quarter of the city’s population – she knew that reporters parachuting in to cover the Games were likely to fall back on harmful cliches. As in many cities, media reports on Rio’s informal settlements often depicted them as decrepit, dangerous, and miserable. These were the stereotypes that US swimmer Ryan Lochte and his teammates drew on to concoct their bogus story about being robbed at gunpoint.



Many of the 1,000 or so favelas do face problems with poor sanitation, inadequate housing, and violence. But the neighbourhoods vary widely, and many are vibrant communities with productive economies and homes of concrete and brick. Drug violence garners sensational coverage, but only 37% of favelas are controlled by drug gangs, and fewer than 1% [pdf] of residents are involved in trafficking.

More nuanced coverage has emerged in recent years, but as the Olympics approached, along with 30,000 journalists, Williamson worried they would create a perfect storm: swarming reporters with tight deadlines, limited resources, and ignorance of the local language and landscape.

“We thought we might see an increase in poor, stigmatising and inaccurate reporting,” she says now. “If journalists don’t have access to communities or story ideas, they ignore favelas or start producing the same old stereotypes.”

Through her tiny Rio-based non-profit, Catalytic Communities (known as CatComm), Williamson and her colleagues decided to do what they could to change the narrative. Williamson, who was born in Brazil and raised in the US, had founded the organisation in 2000 as she completed research for a PhD in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania. The group first launched an online database and a physical community centre to support local initiatives in favelas. In 2008, it shifted to training communities in online publishing and social media tools. But after Rio won its bid to host the Olympics in late 2009, the team – with the equivalent of just four full-time staffers and dozens of volunteers – focused on preparing for the deluge of coverage.

Photographers at the Rio Olympic stadium. Photograph: Antonin Thuillier/AFP/Getty Images

If communities are seen through stigmatising lenses, the policies are poorly implemented Theresa Williamson

Drawing on the group’s network of 1,200 community leaders from around 200 favelas, they launched RioOnWatch, a hyper-local news site, in May 2010. They compiled online resources, including a list of more than 50 community leaders willing to talk to reporters. They sent newsletters suggesting under-covered topics that residents wanted to spotlight: a centuries-old favela facing removal, a neighbourhood at risk of landslides and ignored by authorities, an Olympics media village built on a slave burial ground. During the Games this summer, they took nearly 30 journalists on “reality tours” that introduced them to favelas bearing the brunt of Olympics construction and community leaders fighting for sanitation and safe housing.

“Favelas were going to be part of the story,” says Williamson. “We saw an opportunity to create a more accurate, nuanced narrative that reflects their attributes and will allow us to help favelas develop in a way that’s community driven. No matter how well a policy is designed, if communities are seen through stigmatising lenses, the policies are poorly implemented.”

Williamson wants reporters who visit Rio to avoid blanket descriptions of generic favelas and treat them as unique and specific places, highlighting their often-ignored assets, such as self-organisation and solidarity. She hopes to steer them away from dramatised descriptions of drug trafficking and shanties, which don’t apply to the vast majority of favela residents. Critically, she wants reporters to understand that favelas are rooted in a history of slavery, state neglect and stigma.

Mich Cardin, a New York-based freelance writer, found CatComm online and reached out a few days before landing in Rio in May. She had an assignment from Broadly, Vice’s women-focused site, on favelas affected by Olympics construction projects. She didn’t know anyone in Rio, didn’t speak Portuguese, and only had two weeks.

View of the Rocinha favela in Rio. Photograph: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Cardin was helped by David Robertson, a CatComm intern fluent in Portuguese. He took her to Vila União Curicica, where hundreds of residents had been evicted for a transportation project, and more were under threat. She met with residents such as Gloria, who’d lived there for 25 years and showed her the bulldozed lots her neighbours once occupied.

We are driving up against one of the strongest social stigmas in the world today Theresa Williamson

“I knew the media had sensationalised favelas, but I didn’t know to what extent,” Cardin says. “These were people who put whatever money they had into making their homes more comfortable, and there was a major sense of community. It broke a lot of stereotypes for me.”

During the Olympics, CatComm took dozens of journalists to public housing complexes and the City of God, made famous in the eponymous 2003 film. They talked with residents about the impact of the Games and other challenges. Susan Ormiston from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation says: “[CatComm] almost acts as a translator, and I don’t mean language – but cultures. It would be helpful in other countries.”

But with a crowdfunded annual budget of $100,000 (£80,000), CatComm’s footprint is limited. In the international media, stereotypes have continued to seep through.

“We are driving up against one of the strongest social stigmas in the world today,” Williamson says. “There is also the judgment that comes from outsiders who assume that money equals happiness, or money equals development.”

But judging from the more than 200 articles that CatComm has actively informed, the organisation has been successful at getting favela perspectives and voices in the media. Coverage has even increased compensation packages for displaced favela residents and stopped demolitions in some areas, Williamson says.

CatComm certainly has a distinct outlook, but Williamson resists the idea that the group is painting an overly rosy picture of informal settlements. “We never deny favelas’ limitations and problems, but that’s true for all communities,” she says. “Talking about the good doesn’t mean you’re romanticising. The reality is the opposite: by not recognising these communities’ assets, we are depriving them and ourselves of true development.”

Will Carless, a correspondent for Public Radio International who landed in Rio a year ago, says journalists who draw on CatComm’s resources are not in danger of being biased if they follow professional standards. “I understand, as I think most correspondents here do, that CatComm has a certain worldview and agenda … Should journalists be spoon-fed everything that [Williamson] says? Certainly not. Should they seek out other alternate viewpoints? Absolutely. But that’s pretty basic journalism.”

For Williamson, getting the message out is critical: “Policies in Rio are counterproductive because they’re based on stigma. We need to come to see favelas for their assets, which will make it so much easier to deal with their challenges.”

This piece was originally published on The Development Set, part of Honeyguide Media

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