Ana Claudia was the first recipient of the ACI sponsorship programme.
When she first started studying she was a 21 year old girl from a poor family in the slums of Rio, Brazil. After 5 years of sponsorship, Ana Claudia graduated in December 2011 with a degree in Nursing.
Ana Claudia is the eldest of 4 children; her father is a watch repairer and her mother is a house maid. Her parents separated when she was 2 years old and her brother died of an aneurism.
Like millions of families, her family live below the poverty line, and she is the only person in her family with an education up to secondary (high) school level. At the age of 18, God planted a dream in Ana Claudia’s heart that one day she would become a nurse but she dismissed the dream because she couldn’t see how that could ever come to pass with her social and economic background. But in 2006 the ACI sponsors made her dream a living reality by funding her nursing degree.
