Climbing school for the very poor in Rio

Centro de Escalada Urbana was founded in 2010 and aims to use climbing as a tool to engage and mentor at-risk youth from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It was co-founded by Andrew Lenz, a professionally certified climbing instructor with over 15 years of experience running community outreach programs in different slums around the city. The program offers free climbing classes (both indoor and outdoor) to youth from the ages 8 to 20 years old in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio. It also has a scholarship program that supports 3 youth mentors, allowing them to stay in school and in the program rather than leaving their studies behind to work mediocre jobs in order to pay bills. These youth receive a monthly scholarships and in exchange are responsible for finishing their high school studies, opening and managing the indoor climbing wall in Rocinha 3 times a week, studying English at a course the program enrolled them in, competing in local climbing competitions, as well as climbing outdoors once a week with the goal of working towards getting their professional guiding certification. Today the program counts on the support of the local climbing community for volunteer work and on the international climbing community for gear and monetary donations. The program has a monthly cost of about 1200 Euros per month to cover the rent of the community space that houses the wall, the three scholarships and small operational costs (for those that think this is high, its good to remember that, although Rio has wide spread poverty and social inequality, its still one of the most expensive cities in the Americas). In the beginning, the program was mostly just Andrew taking a small group of about 4 -5 kids out to climb on the 200 meter cliffs that tower over the Rocinha slum. During the first few years the greatest challenge was logistical, managing to get the youth together, travel around the city and safely teach them on the multi-pitch routes that Rio has most off, all with limited resources and volunteers. The number of students attending the program never surpassed 8-10. But in 2015, through the support of a few international organizations such as Beyond Gear (USA) and Urban Uprising (UK) he was able to put together enough funds to rent a space inside the slum and build a small bouldering wall. This immediately helped double the size the group of youth the program was were able to work with as well as the sort of attention they are able to give them. C.E.U. still depends on volunteer instructors though, which makes it difficult to maintain consistent outing and focused training. Today they still teach outdoor climbing, but have widely expanded their indoor program. The state wide junior boulder championship was won by one of students. We have another student climbing as hard as 7c on single pitch routes and V10 boulder problems, and still another that is specializing in multi pitch trad routes. 2018 has a lot of potential for C.E.U. They want to double the size of group, working with up to 40 youth, including a program just for young women climbers. We want to bring in more professional instructors (our dream would be able to offer paid positions, ensuring quality and consistency) and are also hoping to expand on many parallel cultural and environmental activities that can be offered to our youth. It could be a difficult year though if the program doesn’t manage to raise enough funds to at least pay their monthly costs. At this point they are guaranteed to operate until May of 2018. More info and here you can support them with cash.