EDISCA is an example of showcasing how dance can be a supportive outlet for young girls in turning their lives around. Dancing, no matter who does it or where it’s happening, can convey a stronger, deeper message underneath. Dancers don’t always need lights, costumes, or a stage to learn everyday skills that many kids, who don’t dance, don’t get the opportunity to, or tell an important story.

If dance groups are lucky enough, they have the chance to make a difference in the world. In Brazil, using the unique medium of dance as a way to help children create a life for themselves that is safer than the roads on which many young girls fall in Fortaleza.

Background

Escola de Dança e Integração Social para Criança e Adolescente (EDISCA) is a non-governmental group based in Fortaleza, Brazil. Fortaleza faces many challenges with urban poverty, extreme inequality, and a large expanding slum population, and these problems infiltrate the lives of young girls who want to make a life for themselves.

According to the 2025 census data, Fortaleza could have a population of around 2.58-3.24 million. With an estimated 23.1% below the country’s poverty line in 2023-2024. The majority of the children who go to EDISCA cannot read or write, many have health problems, and are close to running away from their violent home lives. EDISCA is important for these young girls to break the habit of global poverty that many children face.

Importance of EDISCA with Poverty

The mission of EDISCA is to promote human development through education, art, and practices that encompass goodness, beauty, and justice. Founded in 1992 by Dora Andrade, EDISCA was made to “provide dance, theater and various other art forms… helps the children understand their and their families’ struggles.”

Andrade first started her dance career in the USA, but quickly changed her pathway when she returned home to teach girls to dance their way out of the slums, along with multiple life skills, critical skills, education, and self-esteem.

Andrade, along with other staff members, teaches the students about health care, nutrition, art, theater, and reading and writing. There is even a psychologist at EDISCA, Madeline Abreu, who talks to the children about the emotional burdens they may carry, according to PassBlue.

EDISCA focuses on children and adolescents who live in the most vulnerable favela communities, offering them an opportunity for an empowering path. The idea is that the girls can become ambassadors of change and take control of their lives by breaking the cycle of poverty and social exclusion. Families and government officials have the opportunity to come and witness the changes being made in EDISCA.

Dance as a Stepping Stone for Change

EDISCA helps outsiders understand that children, specifically from favela communities, can be an important resource for change. Indeed, the performing arts give people the chance to “learn teaching, and teach learning,” SIT study abroad reports. Politicians who come to see some of the work going on at EDISCA see that these underprivileged kids are part of the change, not just the elite

In a country facing extreme poverty, like Brazil, dance serves as an important outlet for young people. For children who go to EDISCA, it is a way to learn basic everyday skills, the chance to turn their life around, and even develop healthy habits, instead of falling down a pathway of prostitution or drug abuse.

EDISCA goes around the world, performing for a wide audience, showcasing the talent that the children have, with the potential to gain more students. It uses dance as a way to push for social justice and build a better future. EDISCA has changed so many lives, and hopes to continue that.

With all the success EDISCA has achieved using dance as a unique medium, it has become a stepping stone for other organizations, including “Dance Out of Poverty” in India, to create their own dance group. The poverty these children face in the favela communities was imposed on them by the higher communities, but EDISCA has flipped the cards by showing them the problems and how EDISCA is making a change.

– Elizabeth Fryer

Elizabeth is based in Philadelphia, PA, USA and focuses on Good News and Global Health for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Flickr