Thirty years have passed. And it feels like yesterday, so vivid is the memory. Not only for Viviane.
‘If we want to change something we need to start with the children.’ That’s what Viviane’s brother said more than once. She remembers clearly. They talked about it 30 years ago. The opportunity he had been given. The opportunity of education, of a future, of hope that had been denied to so many youngsters across the country. He wanted to change that. Viviane had no doubt that this wasn’t some passing whim, some do-good reaction to people he had met, children he had seen on the streets. Viviane knew her brother. He really meant it.
What Viviane did not know when their conversation came to an end 30 years ago was that it would fall to her to execute his idea, his grand nationwide vision of philanthropy. Viviane would always give credit to the wider family for taking on the responsibility with her and, like her brother, readily acknowledged she could never have achieved anything entirely on her own. ‘I am part of a team,’ he liked to say, ‘When I win, I’m not the only one who wins.’
First, a mechanism for philanthropy had to be created and a means to sustain it. A Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in her brother’s name funded by 100 per cent of the royalties from his named products and brand, was the best way to get started. The next decision on the vehicle for philanthropy, the focus of the new NGO, was also straightforward. It would be developing opportunities for children in education and, running parallel with that, training educators.
In the early years of the Institute created by Viviane and her family, an Education Through Sport initiative was quickly followed by an emergency programme to re-engage, re-equip and re-direct disadvantaged pupils who were struggling badly at school and giving up on education. By the end of its first decade of operation under Viviane’s leadership, the Institute became the first NGO in the world to be awarded the Chair for Education and Human Development by UNESCO. Personal recognition for Viviane followed in 2012 with an international prize for Individual Philanthropy.
The conversation is key to the understanding of Viviane’s extraordinary achievements as a philanthropist over the last 30 years. The education system cannot stagnate she always says; adding that a five-year-old will experience the same amount of change over the next 15 years as humanity has experienced in the last century. Anyone not joining, not given an opportunity, will be left behind, excluded, lapped. The conversation builds speed. It accelerates innovation between government authorities, educators, companies, policy makers. The conversation means changing gear through shared expertise, scientific research, data and knowledge to speed up solutions to such deep-rooted problems as literacy, better teaching practice, access to technology and, not least, social skills and mobility. Between 2016 and 2021 alone, the Institute published 29 scientific documents, more than half of which have been published in international and national journals.
Viviane’s conversation has been with, for, driven by, the children of Brazil, and the education and steer they need to avoid being stuck in the slow lane of the 21st century. In just one year, the Institute’s 25th, Viviane’s colleagues and collaborators trained no fewer than 160,000 educators. A total of 1.3 million children and young people benefitted from the Institute’s educational projects nationwide. In one year! In its lifetime to date, the Institute has been active in more than 3,000 municipalities in all Brazilian states, improving the education and future prospects of more than 34 million jovens brasileiros. It is philanthropy on an Amazonian scale.
Thirty years ago Viviane and her brother had a conversation. Two months later, a three-time world champion, he was killed at the age of 34 on the race track in a Formula 1 race at Imola. The Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning and an estimated three million people lined the streets from the airport to the city of São Paolo to pay their respects as his coffin passed on its return from Italy.
The Ayrton Senna Institute is what it is, Viviane says, because of Ayrton’s passion for Brazil, because of his desire to give every Brazilian child a fair opportunity. He wore his Brazilian heart on his helmet, on the national flags he waved in victory. Ayrton might well have said that the Ayrton Senna Institute is what it is because his sister will not give up, will not slow down, will not allow the conversation to end.