Denise grew up in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro in a Christian home. They were a middle-class family attending a middle-class church. As part of their outreach ministries, at 16 years of age, Denise found herself volunteering to climb the hills in her city to minister to the poor children in the favela.

She became very aware of the inequality and the problems that community faced. That’s when she decided to study social work in college, graduating in 1985. After graduation, she moved to a remote region in the hills of Minas Gerais, to help a Dutch missionary. Over the last 40 years, she organized and then led the work already started there with the poorest families. The Dutch mission had a vision to establish a local church in each small town of the region and in each small congregation, a daycare facility to serve the families so they could work without abandoning their kids at home.

She was very receptive and proactive in adopting a sexual abuse prevention methodology focused on the skills the entire community could adopt to prevent sexual violence. This program is called Claves and is the result of a great effort of translation and adaptation carried out by our network.

She collaborated with our magazine during 2000-12 and today she downloads materials from our website to use with her team.

She has led her organization and teammates to use our materials, prayer campaigns, Christian Worker’s campaigns that we prepare.

Northbrook Church funded the publication of a book for Christian Workers. The story of one of Denise’s workers received the first prize in our call for submissions.

Our network keeps her connected to the rest of Brazil through yearly events. She often tells us how the network has helped her to stay connected with her peers outside her small corner of the world.

Biggest challenge and greatest win:

Convincing her leadership of the need to train everyone to have a prevention-first approach to sexual violence, was no small task. Today she tells us that 90 percent of the pastors, the seminary students, the Christian educators in Sunday School and Christian workers involved in the daycare programs have received various trainings. It is an ongoing process that requires steadfastness.

Denise retired some years ago, but three years later she returned because she felt the need to better train her successors in leadership. She has now announced that, for the second time, she will retire. For those who know her well this only means a change of pace. She will now focus on training another generation of Christian workers. She will also be able to adopt a more leisurely approach, befitting to her season of life.