The Origins — How Hangar Began

Since I was a child, I carried the wish to build something social — something real, something that truly mattered. After many years in church work in Switzerland, that wish slowly turned into practice. I learned what it means when faith doesn't stay in words but grows hands and feet. And I learned to listen to a need and to answer it with presence — not with pity, but with real encounter, eye to eye.

In the summer of 2021, I wrote to a local pastor in Rio named Bruno. We got to know each other and talked about the needs of his community, about what might be possible if someone actually tried. Out of those conversations grew an idea that wouldn't let go of us.

In February 2022, we travelled to Icaraí. We wanted to meet the land and the people, to see the place, to understand the projects already there. We visited a project in a community and met a reality that moved us. And we felt something we could no longer ignore: in Icaraí, one street is often all that separates two worlds. On one side, abundance; on the other, a very different reality. A place that lives so close together needs a bridge between those two worlds.

After that trip, back in Switzerland, it became clear to us: yes, we will do this. The decision didn't arrive as a grand plan, but as a quiet certainty.

Between arriving and letting go

Before the project could take shape, life led us through a heavy year. From summer into autumn 2024, we worked a great deal — me at the school, Noël on his business. In the middle of it, a sense of calm grew in us, a feeling of finally arriving in this new life in Brazil.

But that arriving was overshadowed. Noël's father received a cancer diagnosis, and only four months later, in November, he passed away. Noël travelled to Switzerland and was able to see his father one last time. Instead of the Christmas together we had planned, it became a time of farewell. We spent the holidays in Switzerland — with family, with friends, with a heavy heart, but also with deep gratitude for the years we'd shared.

Those weeks reminded us where we come from. Stability, a strong education system, infrastructure that works — we grew grateful for all of it again. And in the middle of that gratitude, we felt something surprising: Brazil had become our home. One of our children told me he didn't want to go back, that Switzerland was too cold for him. Our youngest, standing in one of the most beautiful playgrounds in Switzerland, put his hands in his pockets and simply said he'd rather play in the sand. I love Switzerland and its people. But my heart beats here now. It was from that security that we could return in mid-January and open a new chapter.

Niterói: a country of contrasts

To understand why Hangar is needed, you have to know the reality of this city. Brazil is a country full of resources, and yet only a few have access to them. A broad middle class is missing. In Niterói, the favelas often begin right next to well-kept neighbourhoods. That closeness of two worlds shapes the daily life of thousands of families.

In the middle of this pulsing life, our church — ICF Rio — is growing. Its five pioneer years had come to an end, and it was time to look outward. In our immediate neighbourhood there are three public schools, attended by around 3,000 children. During a project we ran together, the school leadership told us where the greatest need lay: in programmes before and after class, in a place where teenagers are caught and held. That is exactly where Hangar begins.

The invisible work

The first concrete steps were immediate and anything but glamorous. Learning the language, understanding the culture. A local project, made by local people for local teenagers, demands a true understanding of culture — and that cannot be translated; it has to be lived.

In the church there were already around ten teenagers from the neighbourhood. We started with them and for them. They knew this place, its rhythms, its unwritten rules. To that came the many bureaucratic steps that, in Brazil, are genuinely not simple. The bureaucracy is long and seems never to end — but it is obligatory and important. It is the price of building something properly, something that lasts. Alongside it, we searched for a space and built relationships with the public schools. It is the invisible work that happens long before anything visible appears.

Why all of this is needed

One Saturday, we went out as a family on a trip to a waterfall. We had barely arrived when a girl came up to me and didn't leave my side the whole day. I was in rest mode, not really open to an encounter. But she was simply there. We chatted, she played in the water with our children.

When we asked where her mother was, she answered quietly: her mother was no longer there. She had lost her to the violence of the neighbourhood. Today the girl lives with her younger sister, in the care of an older sister. Far too soon she had to carry responsibility, far too soon she was forced to be grown up. As we were leaving, she fought back tears.

This girl is one of many. What she needs is not pity, but a place where she can simply be, where someone sees her, and where she can build relationships. That is exactly what Hangar exists for.

The first meetings

In March 2025, the first real meetings with the teenagers took place. Learning their names, hearing their stories, slowly earning their trust — those are the moments that have stayed with me most. Trust is not earned with a promise. It is earned only one way: by showing up again and again, and truly listening.

This is where transformation begins. Not with grand vision statements, but with presence.