Lixão de Gramacho (Gramacho’s Garbage Dump) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

It’s hard to believe that just 30 minutes away from the beautiful beaches of Rio de Janeiro, thousands of people are living in such an extreme poverty.

They used to work as garbage pickers in the Gramacho’s dump, anonymous people that used to survive of the garbage.

To have an idea of how huge is this dump (biggest of Latin America) until the closing of this landfill in June 2012, in the peak of his operation were thrown 8.000 tons of garbage per day that arrived by approximately 650 trucks.

The size of the landfill was equivalent to 15 Maracana’s stadiums, with a height that reached more than 30 meters. Everyday, 4.000 people used to pick garbage on the rampage, day and night, 24 hours, fleeing the threat of the tractors and sharp and punches objects. All of this happens 4 miles from the International Airport, the welcome door for tourists that visit the Wonderful City.

Everything started in 1978, when COMLURB installed next to Bay of Guanabara a garbage dump for urban waste, but the interest for the place just began when a little later, some of the supermarkets chains started to thrown in that place expired date food. The news spread and a multitude saw in the dump a way to not die starving. At the same time started the practice of picking recyclable materials. The practice that once was a sporadic gain took place of a lifestyle. While some people started trying to live close to their job, one to one the huts became to being built around the landfill.

After the closing of the landfill, the final result are families living until now in this big portion of misery, without any structure, expose to diseases and living with pigs and vultures. Hundreds of illiterates adults, kids without any registration, people with HIV, unemployed, under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The diseases are everywhere, scabies, worms, tuberculosis. The kids walk barefoot surrounded by hospital garbage and ride pigs like horses. Despite of this, there are endless reasons to understand that this people need help.

To Jesus no one is forgotten or rejected. Jesus have enough love and power to transform lives of any human being. However the populations like the one from Gramacho’s Garbage Dump are forgotten by the society and government. The church that is the body of Christ and the hope of the world, have to reach this people with the most practical love.

For this reasons, we are there, running a movement where the habitants are being loved with all our hearts.

People are receiving material and spiritual help, the Kingdom of God is being taught for the kids and the adults, they are being discipled to be everyday more similar to Jesus. While this, the Holy Spirit is manifesting and doing wonderful things in this place.

Click on this link to see in Google Maps where our base is: http://goo.gl/maps/jg3LH