Ayrton Senna is more than a memory. He’s an ideal – and, 30 years after his tragic death during the San Marino Grand Prix, the charitable foundation set up to honour his wishes continues to fight to improve the lives of children and youth in Brazil
WORDS ERWIN JAEGGI PICTURES JOÃO RAPOSO, THAIS VAZ
There are many glass-fronted offices in the São Paulo district of Pinheiros. But only one has a McLaren MP4/5 – specifically the one Ayrton Senna drove to victory in the 1990 Italian GP – on the 15th floor. This is the home of the Ayrton Senna Institute, where the three-time world champion’s ambition to give Brazilian children better opportunities lives on.
“At the beginning of 1994, Ayrton was having a conversation with his sister Viviane,” explains Thiago Fernandes, business development director at Senna Brands. “He asked for her help. He had been giving a lot of money to a lot of different causes, but he wasn’t seeing concrete results or a structural improvement. So he asked Viviane: ‘Please, can help you help me think of something which could help Brazil to improve as a country?’
“Ayrton always understood that he was able to become a Formula 1 driver because he had the opportunity to develop his potential and that he was ‘lucky’ enough to come from a family that could afford to provide him with this opportunity. It frustrated him that the majority of the kids in Brazil didn’t have this luck and opportunity to develop their potential. So behind his request to Viviane was this dream Ayrton had that everyone should be able to develop without being limited by the income the family has in which you are born. But then there was the accident.”
Later that year Viviane started to turn her brother’s dream into a reality by founding the Ayrton Senna Institute. Its focus is on better education as the fundamental path towards greater opportunities for individuals – ultimately benefitting the country as a whole.
“In Brazil almost 90% of the school-aged population goes to public schools, around 40 million students,” says Fernandes. “In the beginning the foundation focused on supporting individual kids. But when Viviane looked around she saw a whole bunch of kids that weren’t getting that same opportunity. So holistically, we weren’t really improving the quality of the education. We were only attending a few lucky o
