Hello, my name is Rodrigo. I'm originally from Santa Maria do Pará. I was only two years old when I arrived in São Paulo in my grandparents' arms, driven by the dream of a better future.

Upon arriving, our journey took a turn opposite to what we had planned. At the age of five, I experienced my first eviction. In the 2000s, my family had to start over in a shack in Inácio Monteiro, in Cidade Tiradentes, a neighborhood marked by violence, prejudice, and the absence of basic rights.

My pillar has always been the love of my family: my cousins, my grandparents, and my aunt (my adoptive mother), who has lived with a motor disability since childhood. On July 28, 2008, at the age of 13, I saw our shack being demolished. Homeless, we were taken in by the abandoned warehouse of a store. From that loss, the anger I carried only worsened, but with it, a promise was also born.

In 2014, I discovered art through the Fábricas de Cultura project. On my very first day, I went to pick up children from a neighboring community. As I entered, I felt a tightness in my chest until a little blonde girl with blue eyes, barefoot, ran up, grabbed my leg, and asked: "Uncle, are you going to take me to the Fábrica?" I cried at that moment. I saw myself in that child; I remembered when I waited for someone to bring me something good, but that someone never appeared.

That day, I understood my mission and promised that one day I would bring "Something Good" to places like that. I didn't yet know how, nor did I know what it was, but I knew I would accomplish it.

In 2017, I started working at the Tiradentes Cultural Center. More mature, I spontaneously began reviewing projects that arrived by email to help them secure financial support. Thanks to these reviews, more than 60 initiatives obtained funding. However, when trying to provide guidance on punctuality, quality, and welcoming environments, I realized that no one was truly concerned with providing humane care to the children; the focus was solely on the money.

In 2020, I was laid off. Without a formal plan, I gathered all the corrections I had accumulated and decided to create something from scratch. I only had three certainties: the purpose, the name, and the color.

Blue is the color of my grandmother's eyes and the barefoot little girl's; the color of my first birthday cake, my first uniform at the Fábricas de Cultura (Culture Factories), and the place where I dreamed of working: UNICEF. Blue has always been my non-negotiable choice. No one could change my mind, even when they said that "children's things need to be colorful" or questioned how I would find everything in that shade. I firmly believed that this color would become the trademark of my journey because it carried so much meaning for me.

On October 10, 2022, I held my first event, putting into practice all the improvements I had mapped out, now with its own visual identity in a color that everyone would remember. It was beautiful; more than 1,300 children were served at the debut.

Blue is what reconnects me and brings inclusion to children who grow up invisible, as I once was. The project was born to be where nobody wants to go. Since childhood, I searched for someone to save me from that situation, until I understood what my grandmother told me one day: when we can't find someone to save us from a situation, and we don't find them, that person is ourselves. Since then, I have been.

Today, Voltando a Ser Criança (Returning to Childhood) is a registered social brand. We have already held more than 80 events, served more than 60,000 children, and visited more than 90 neighborhoods with the same reality as the place where I grew up. We have our own structure and integrated logistics, including an online store and a line of official products.

In April 2026, we took another big step by launching #TimeDasCrianças (Team of the Kids), our outreach program for volunteers. We brought together young university students driven by the purpose of experiencing in practice what no book can teach: the art of seeing, the act of including, and the mission of using their gifts to serve those who need it most.

Rodrigo Vevé | Founder