The dream of painting an entire favela in Rio de Janeiro is closer to become real now that the crowdfunding campaign launched by two Dutch artists in September has come to an end with over 100,000 US dollars raised for paint and painters.

When Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn started the Favela Painting project in 2005, their idea was to create public artworks in favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Eight years later, their dream has escalated “to paint an entire hillside favela and create a social artwork of epic size”:

Spreading pride and optimism, creating jobs and attract attention in a positive way. Local people will be hired and trained, hundreds of houses plastered and painted, an entire neighborhood mobilized to transform their own community into an artwork that will become a monument for the people in the favelas of Brazil.