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Ute Craemer Ute Craemer was born in Weimar, Germany, in 1938, and was raised in countries destroyed by the Second World War. When she was three years of age her family moved to Austria, which had been invaded by the Germans. When the war was over, in May 1945, Ute's family survived with very little food. Ute still remembers her mother begging for food from peasants. Her father, who was an engineer, first obtained a job in Yugoslavia, then in Egypt, and later in Pakistan. By the time the family returned to Germany (then divided in two nations), Ute had studied in ten different schools, five different countries, and learned four different languages. After spending her childhood learning languages, Ute decided to major in this area. She finished her studies in 1962, and signed up for voluntary service, which brought her to Brazil. She lived in Londrina, Paraná state, for two years and worked as an aid on the city's urbanization and slum-eradication works, guided by a Francis-can friar.  Ute returned to Germany to study, and learned more about Anthroposophic Pedagogy, as well as spiritual and mystic doctrines based on theosophy. She returned to Brazil, obtaining a job in São Paulo at an anthroposophic school named after the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). During that period she housed two boys she had known in Londrina. In 1975, four children were living with her; some of whom are still with her today. She preferred to remain single, claiming that "Brazilian men have a way of telling people what to do". ACOMA'S FOUNDATION Go here for the In the late seventies, Ute Craemer was living in a neighbor-hood near the slum, and was teaching at the Rudolf Steiner school. This school, based on Anthrosophic Pedagogy, teaches upper middle-class students. The characteristic of the school is that each teacher takes the same students all the way to the eighth grade, helping them develop not only intellectually but also morally. This educational method values the arts and the formation of ethical principles, allowing the child to develop a capacity to judge. Ute says that she "never really felt up to such responsability". Daily, children from the neighboring slum would knock on her door and ask if she "had anything to give". In talking to them Ute immediately realized that they not only lacked resources, but the children were also "hungry for other things". One day she accepted their invitation to visit the place they lived; a neighbor-hood which at the time had no name. Ute registered her first impression of the place: "It was all mud, with huts built from left-over boards, one on top of the other, and in between them the sewage ran freely".  Thereafter the children went to Ute's house not only to eat, but also to paint, draw, and play in the garden; which soon became too small. Once, after talking to one of the mothers of the Rudolf Steiner students, Ute proposed to the class to help the slum children. Her students were immediately excited and gave several suggestions: work with clay, excursions, teach them how to read and write. Ute belie-ved this to be good both for the poor chil-dren and the upper middle-class chil-dren: the latter would be able to teach some of what they had learned in seven years at school. She also believed that the interaction between children of such dif-ferent social backgrounds would help raise their awareness that the world they live in needs this kind of sharing. That this is an essential attitude for humanity. The idea was successful, and Ute started asking for money to build a school for the poor children. "I would often be embarassed, but even so asked money from door to door", she recalls. Ute wrote so many letters requesting help that she finally received 10,000 German marks from a German lawyer called Luchterhandt. With this money she founded ACOMA. Look at www.monteazul.org.br/ |
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