A live database of Olympic evictions

Building facilities for hosting a mega-event like the Olympics often has substatial consequences for the people that live in the affected city areas. In Rio, a great number of lives have been altered because of the Olympic Games and the legacy comprises of residents who find themselves indebted, psychologically and physically disturbed and under control by militias, show the results from a journalistic project that has followed 100 of these people.

Four journalists set out to describe and document the evictions in relation to the Rio Olympics and the result is a website that describes the background, the current situation and future expectations of some of the more than 2,500 families that have been evicted from their homes because of the Olympics. The project is called ‘Project 100’.

When the Games end, the journalistic attention often fades and with ‘Project 100’, the involved journalists seek to tell the stories that are laft untold.

"Where were these families removed to? Did people’s lives improve? Were the authorities’ promises fulfilled?,” the journalists ask.  

The stories are told through interviews, video reportages, graphics and data and let the reader in on personal accounts of families being threatened to leave their homes, absence of information, fear of militias and a lack of basic rights in the eviction processes.

“Project 100 is the most in-depth investigation into what happened after 2,500 families were expelled and had their houses demolished because of the Olympics. We listened to the stories of the families in the biggest multimedia investigation yet into evictions relating to the Olympics,” says Natalia Viana, one of the journalists behind the project, that has been published by non-profit Brazilian investigative journalism centre Agência Pública, to ChildrenWin.

The initiators of the project hope that it will be put into use as a live database of the evictions and that it will be useful for an array of various stakeholders.

“The stories, told on camera by the victims themselves, can be used by researchers, journalists and public policy formers as a primary source of information. It is a live database of Olympic evictions,” the website says.