I recently spent two months in Brazil exploring whether enterprise could meaningfully change young people’s lives and their communities. Amongst the many determined young people I was privileged to meet and learn from were a self-taught, teenage journalist, a founder of an arts charity tackling child trafficking and a creator of the first favela dance school in the ‘City of God’.

Rio de Janeiro is a city of contrasts, where some of the most affluent neighbourhoods sit alongside favela communities that face incredible levels of disadvantage. The ability to survive and access opportunities that might change one’s circumstances relies on being creative and enterprising and the determined, hardworking attitude of many of the young people that I met was a far cry from the laid-back, work-shy, 24 hour party lifestyle that I had associated with Brazil.

Whilst the need to be enterprising feels like a part of the DNA of…