Remembering sport education in Brazilian communities : climbing a Favela hill to build the pedagogy of courage

In the past two decades, sports education and more recently sports for development have become mainstream tools for a different range of international agencies and activists to reach to vulnerable communities. Especially in Global South countries within Africa and South America, sports interventions aiming to support children and youth to feel belonging even in harsh social and economic conditions have grown in an accelerated mode. Using a narrative style to look at how sports education was delivered in Brazil in the early 1970s, this chapter addresses key questions of social inclusion through sports in low-level socio-economic communities in São Paulo, the largest South American city. The chapter also reveals how sports educators can become entangled in an emotional situation within these projects even decades after their end.