Yahoo Lifestyle Cinderella Story: How Debutante Balls Are Changing Lives In Rio's Favelas
Photo: Getty Images
Rayane Rosa, 15, walks into Rio de Janeiro’s Ilha Fiscal castle looking like something out of a Disney film. Her white gown shines under the lights and a tiara glitters atop her head. A man in an elegant uniform takes her by the hand and the two
begin to waltz.
Tonight is Rosa’s “quinze anos”, the rite of passage Brazilian girls celebrate when they turn 15. But this Cinderella story was only possible thanks to an unlikely fairy godmother – the city’s Police Pacification Unit (UPP) or military police.
For Rosa, growing up in the city’s Cerro-Corá favela, a poor hillside community in the shadow of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, this lavish celebration would normally have been beyond her family’s meagre means.
Enter officer Daniela Chagas, a member of the UPP squad tasked with cracking down on gang warfare in Rosa’s neighbourhood. Chagas came up with the idea of throwing a quinze anos party for local girls as a way of building community bridges and mending strained relations.
Photo: Getty Images
“We wanted to do something special for the neighbourhood’s girls,” says Chagas. “We wanted them to feel like real princesses and get the type of party any girl would dream of.”
To make that dream a reality, Chagas and her team turned to local shops and suppliers, who offered dresses, make-up and catering. Even the iconic Copacabana Palace hotel provided a room for the girls to get ready in. Instead of a pumpkin carriage, the 13 teenagers were transported in a pink limousine.
“This is beyond anything I would have ever imagined,” says Rosa. “I feel like I’m living in a fairytale.” Watching her daughter take to the dance foor, Rosa’s mother Regiane Rosa, 44, can hardly conceal her pride: “There are things I simply can’t provide for my daughter. This is a dream come true.”
But others in the Cerro-Corá neighbourhood believe the quinze anos initiative is just a PR stunt. “We have electrical problems, faulty health care, accumulated trash,” says favela resident Marilande Silva, pointing at a manhole in the favela full of rubbish. “I would like the UPP to fx that.”
Photo: Getty Images
But for teenage Rosa, who is already mother to a one-year-old son, the ball has had a profound impact, boosting her self-confidence and changing her opinion of the authorities.
“I grew up perceiving the police as outsiders, as the enemy,” reveals Rosa a few days later, as her baby naps in her arms. “But now I know officers, like Chagas, can be my friends.
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