Article

Change

Community

Development

22 June 2023

7 min read

To a house on the hill

Why did a New York lawyer move to a Brazilian slum? Jane Cacouris talks to Luke Simone about his extraordinary story.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

an aerial view of a shantytown on a steep hill side in Rio, Sugerloaf Mountain is visible in the distance

Morro da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro.

It was a hot and humid evening in 2015 and Luke had just moved into a tiny house in Morro da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro’s oldest favela, a shantytown located in the heart of the city. His new home was near the top of the hill, sandwiched between two loud and rampant drug dens. He could hear the parties and orgies happening above and below him twenty-four hours a day; his neighbours regularly firing bullets out of the windows. The noise was draining and constant. It was dark outside, and Luke sat frozen in fear, staring at a blank laptop screen by his window facing the street… waiting and praying. He had just been informed that the bandidos (drug traffickers from the main drug gang in the favela) were on their way to pay him a visit. Gossip on the street had spread that he was an undercover police officer. Why else would a white British gringo in his thirties choose to buy a house in one of Rio’s poorest and most dangerous communities?

“After about five minutes I saw a glint out of the corner of my eye… I looked around and a number of drug dealers were arriving on the porch.”

Faced with ten heavily armed gang members, they asked who he was and what he was doing in their community. Luke took a breath and explained that God had called him to Brazil from New York, and that he was choosing to live in Providencia because he loved the neighbourhood, and wanted to serve the community and build something for them; for their children and their young people. The gang listened. Then remarkably they lowered their guns, said “ok then”, and walked away. Luke was stunned.

“I know what happens to people… It was a very violent time. I thought I was going to die and it was terrifying. But God turned it around...”

The relief that he was alive quickly turned into disappointment; a realisation that despite all the sacrifices he had made to be there, he wasn’t wanted by the people he had given up everything to serve.

Armed police patrol the favela.

Armed police stand on steep steps between shantytown dwellings

Five years previously Luke was living in New York working as a finance lawyer with a corporate law firm. He was single, his firm paid for his Manhattan apartment, and he had so much disposable income that he saved half his pay each month. Originally from the UK, he grew up going to a local church in Surrey with his family, but he’d fallen far away from God.

“I was in a favourable position to go off the rails. And I did go off the rails.” he says.

In 2009, the financial crash hit and having spent five years living and working in New York, Luke began to question the premise and direction of his life. Through a family member, he was put in touch with a Christian association working with street children in São Paulo in Brazil, providing living accommodation to homeless children, who were disenfranchised from their families and/or victims of abuse and neglect. The aim was to reintegrate the children where possible with their families. During a weekend visit to São Paulo, within fifteen minutes of being shown around one of the shelters, Luke had a deep conviction that this was where he was meant to be.

“It was not this Damascus Road moment,” he says. “It was a familiar voice. Not someone who was needing to twist my arm or convince me. I felt I was in good hands. Even though change was going to mean going from a six-figure bonus to zero salary…. I was suddenly ready to risk everything knowing I was in these safe hands.”

A few months later Luke moved from New York to Brazil and went on to live and work in one of the shelters for street children for several years. He talks about a particularly bleak time when one of the boys in the shelter took a dislike to him, the relationship becoming so acrimonious that Luke even began fearing for his life. Emotionally and mentally drained, feeling rejected by the children he was trying to care for, he went away for a couple of days to regroup and called his sister. He recalls,

“She said to me, ‘Just come home Luke. Just come home.’”

Her words made him realise that he had life choices the street kids simply didn’t have. He could choose to leave them and “go home” at any moment; home to people who loved and cared for him. The children he was working with were born without options or choices. So, Luke decided to stay, and by making that decision, hoped to model a love and commitment to those who perhaps had never experienced it. A love that doesn’t diminish or disappear, even when we turn our backs.

Luke Simone.

A man sits on a concrete path with one leg splayed out in front.

What is intriguing about Luke’s story is not the desire to “re-purpose” his life. So many of us feel at times in our lives that we are drifting without purpose or meaning but when we look for more purpose, it tends to be either seeking fulfilment in our work - towards more wealth or influence or social legacy - or through our relationships. What is intriguing is that Luke chose to follow God’s purpose, rather than his own.

Luke’s story is one of sacrificing comfort, wealth and status to simply do life alongside the people that society in general has given up on, and, at times, in return getting hostility and death threats from the very people he is walking with. The story is a little reminiscent of the gospel story of Jesus Christ. Although, of course, Luke will be the first to say that he’s certainly not Jesus - “unqualified”, “unprepared” and “broken” are words he uses to describe himself – but perhaps this self-awareness of his own flaws has given him the ability to rely entirely on God rather than himself, in a place where he simply has to.

Missionaries, like Luke, are perceived by many to be the outworking of a colonial interpretation of the “Great Commission.” This refers to a number of passages in the gospel of Matthew where Jesus tells his apostles to “make disciples of all nations.” People assume this means going to far flung places and preaching about Jesus. But when I asked Luke about his work in Providencia, for him, mission is far more integral and encompassing than “straight evangelism.”

As theologian Christopher Wright points out, Jesus was concerned with responding to the needs of people - both materially and spiritually - in the power of the Holy Spirit. The two go together and are integrated. The Book of Acts and letters of the apostle Paul in the Bible show a commitment of the followers of Jesus to preach the good news and bring others to faith, but also to live with compassion as a loving community seeking to address the social and material needs of those around them. In fact, Paul’s first of many missionary journeys was to provide famine relief to prevent starvation of the people in Judea.

So where is Luke now thirteen years after he first left New York? He still lives in Providencia and together with his team of volunteers and a local church in Rio, he has built and runs a community house, Casa Cruzeiro (House of the Cross) and adjoining educational annex at the highest point of the favela.

Casa Cruzeiro.

A group of buildings jostle together at the summit of a hill in a city.

On entering Casa Cruzeiro during my visit to Rio a few months ago, I was struck by the sense of peace. The community around the house is far from calm. It’s poverty at its crudest and, as Luke will say, at times depicting humanity at its darkest. Murder, rape, incest, drugs, extortion, prostitution, abuse, neglect… the list goes on. Life at the margins doesn’t get more marginalised than this. Casa Cruzeiro is a light in the darkness, a stillness in the chaos. It operates an open-door policy where anyone is welcome, drug traffickers included (as long as they behave), for a meal, to hang out, to talk, even to stay if someone needs a roof over their head. About 200 children, adolescents and adults pass through their doors each week, and some of the activities include an afterschool programme, adult literacy support, a communal vegetable garden, career counselling, guitar lessons, bible studies and prayer groups. Material and spiritual needs met seamlessly and uncomplicatedly together as part of a whole.

A Providencia family.

A mother sits with a toddler standing in front of her. The father appears from the side lying on his back reaching an arm out.

A family play in a Rio favela.

If you could rewind the clock by thirteen years, and make a different choice, would you? I ask Luke. He pauses, and says no, but is clear that it hasn’t always felt like an easy choice. He’s often pondered over the comfort and wealth that he left behind. But at the moment he has no plans to leave.

And what has he learnt about God over these years in Brazil?

When he relies on God he feels a deep sense of peace, and a conviction of God’s love in a way he hadn’t known before.

“When God called me to Brazil, he was saying, ‘You need to know me again. I want to reintroduce myself to you. This is who I am. And this is how much I love you.”

Jesus said to His father, “Let thy Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” And as I walk around the safe, clean space of Casa Cruzeiro… chat with Iam over lunch, who became a Christian five years ago when reading a passage of scripture with Luke… hear about Monique, who with the team’s help, has been accepted onto a youth apprenticeship programme… look out from the roof top past the carefully nurtured community vegetable garden to the dark winding alleys and mish mash of favela shacks sprawling down the hill and into the city beyond….and watch Luke’s eyes lighten as he tells me about the young people that he and his team look after and walk through life with…

I realise this is what Jesus meant.

Interview

Change

Community

Faith

S&U interviews

2 October 2023

6 min read

Cost of living crisis: faith and food banks combine to tackle destitution and its causes

The Trussell Trust wants food banks in its network to reduce the need for their services. Robert Wright finds out why the trust regrets they still distribute so much food.

Robert Wright

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

A man stands in front of a food bank's shelves of cereals and boxes labelled by foot type.

Howard Wardle at Eastbourne's food bank.

When Howard Wardle was making plans to set up a food bank in Eastbourne, in East Sussex, he received little support from his fellow church leaders. Speaking in the industrial estate warehouse that has been the food bank’s headquarters since 2017, Wardle recalls how at a meeting called to discuss the idea he largely encountered bafflement. At the time, Wardle was pastor of the town’s Community Church.

“They said, ‘There isn’t a need in the town – you’re wasting your time doing it’,” Wardle says of the meeting in 2011.

Wardle nevertheless received encouragement from Eastbourne’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau, from the major of the local Salvation Army congregation, the local authority’s social services – and the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest organiser of food banks. The food bank, of which Wardle is now chief executive, last year handed out 280,000 meals.

Yet for Wardle and the Emma Revie, the Trussell Trust’s national chief executive, it is a matter of regret that its members are distributing so much food – organisations affiliated with the Trussell Trust handed out 2.99mn parcels in the year to March 2023. The figure was a 37 per cent increase on the year before, a rise largely down to the cost of living crisis started by the spikes in energy and food prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“It’s incredibly worrying and upsetting that so many people – more people – are having to come to food banks,” Revie says.

Workers at the Eastbourne Foodbank and others nationally are following a strategy of campaigning for policies that seek to ensure no one needs to seek emergency food support. They also employ staff who help clients to navigate the benefits system, prepare for work or take other steps to find a permanent solution to their problems.

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough. We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.”

Emma Revie

The Trussell Trust centrally provides organisational support for affiliated food banks but deliberately does not undertake functions such as purchasing food.

Revie says it adopted the strategy of trying to put itself out of business five years ago, after experiencing significant growth in demand for its services. The trust was founded in 1997 in Salisbury by Carol and Paddy Henderson, a Christian couple. Christian principles have been core to the trust’s operations ever since.

“We reached a decision point where we either had to accept that this situation was likely to increase and would always be needed or we had to decide that that was not acceptable and change the way we thought about our work,” Revie says.

The trust recognised how inadequate food parcels were to the fundamental needs that member food banks were seeing among clients, she adds.

“The reason people are coming to food banks is they don’t have enough money to afford the essentials,” Revie says. “They know it’s not going to put credit on the gas meter. They know it’s not going to pay for school shoes.”

The organisation had to decide whether it accepted as inevitable that so many people needed its services or would reorient itself towards working to end that need, she adds.

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough,” Revie says. “We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.”

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits. If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.”

Robert Crockford

In Eastbourne, the strategy of reducing dependence on food banks has been in place from the start, according to Wardle.

“When we started, we felt it was one thing to have a food bank giving out food but another to have people not need to come to food banks,” he says.

After receiving some grant funding, the food bank took on staff to help clients to resolve their financial problems and ensure they were receiving all the welfare benefits to which they were entitled.

“We built a welfare benefits team, a debt team and a medical benefits team so that we could help clients,” Wardle says.

Robert Crockford, the food bank’s senior advocacy officer, says he helps food bank clients to navigate issues such as the two-child limit and the overall benefits cap that restrict the amount benefits recipients can receive.

The two-child limit stops parents from receiving child benefit for any more than two children if the additional children were born after 2017. The benefit cap - £283.71 for a single person living outside Greater London – was introduced in 2013. It limits the total amount a person or family can receive from the system.

Crockford explains that he seeks to help clients to explore whether they count as disabled, a carer or have some other status that might enable them to receive higher benefits.

The group also works with People Matter, a charity that helps to prepare people for work.

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits,” Crockford says. “If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.”

Revie bemoans the overall inadequacy of the benefits system, pointing out that many recipients of Universal Credit – the main income-support benefit for most people who are unemployed or on low incomes in the UK – cannot afford food.

“When almost half the people on that benefit are unable to afford food, something systematically is failing,” she says. “So do you tackle the symptoms or do you tackle the actual problem?”

That emphasis on tackling problems is clear at another food bank affiliated with the trust – in Kingston, on the south-western edge of London.

Ian Jacobs, director of Kingston Foodbank, says his organisation works closely with Citizens’ Advice to try to develop permanent solutions for people seeking help.

“We do deep-dive investigations into people’s circumstances to try to see if we can get more money into people’s pockets,” he says.

Kingston Foodbank currently operates six foodbank centres and one pantry, where referred clients can select and buy reduced-price food. Jacobs says he would like one day to reverse the proportion, so that it operates six pantries and one food bank.

Jacobs, a member of the Doxa Deo Community Church, an independent evangelical church, also makes it clear that many volunteers are working at the food bank out of Christian conviction.

“We’re always open to pray with clients,” he says.

Revie says the trust is “deeply rooted” in the local churches.

“Many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says. “Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith.”

Revie points out that the trust was founded by Christians and that its network grew through approaches by individual churches to the trust.
"We as an organisation work with people of all faiths and none and we certainly support people of all faiths and none," she says. "But we are deeply rooted in the local churches and many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says.
Faith has a "very special role to play" in the trust's work, Revie adds.
“Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith," she says.

“We don’t believe there should be food banks in today’s society,” Jacobs says. “That’s why we do all the extra work to make sure people aren’t dependent on the food bank.”