São Paulo – Approximately BRL 5 million (USD 1 million) still has to be raised for the Foundation for the Support of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) to have the money needed to complete the construction of the future Health Cultural Center set to open in April 2025 in São Paulo, Brazil. The project was approved back in 2018, and the fundraising for the construction started in 2019 via the Roaunet Law. By means of it, BRL 17.3 million (USD 3.2 million) donations were approved. To date, BRL 12 million (USD 2.2 million) were raised.
The Roaunet Law is an act intended to encourage cultural investments through a tax incentive policy that enables companies and citizens to deduct a portion of income tax. The donations to the center can be made via the Rouanet Law or otherwise. Unifesp former president and fundraising commission member Soraya Smaili says a bank and a foundation made donations adding up to BRL 1.5 million (USD 280,000) earlier this year, following the donations that were made from 2019 to 2022 were discontinued in 2023.
Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) president Osmar Chohfi and communication & marketing vice president Silvia Antibas were asked “to present the project to Arab countries, because there’s interested in the cultural aspect and because they can allocate funds outside the Rouanet Law, as a donation,” says Smaili. “If they give something, great. The important thing is to raise money. An Arab descendant herself, she made her donation to the project as a citizen.
Dissemination of the knowledge in healthcare
If the necessary money doesn’t arrive, the Foundation will be faced with two options: discontinue the works and hand it over to the Ministry of Education for it to decide what to do or opening just part of the center.
The building where the Health Cultural Center is being established was first erected in the ’60s. It used to host the Regional Library of Medicine, affiliated with the Pan American Health Organization. Now it is expanded to become a cultural center. The library of Unifesp’s Paulista School of Medicine will continue there and be expanded, and part of its collection will be digitized.
Located in the South Zone of São Paulo, the building is neighbor to healthcare institutions like Unifesp’s Hospital de São Paulo, Hospital do Rim, children’s cancer hospital Graac, and other private and public healthcare facilities. The region also concentrates the Paulista Medicine School and Nursing School, as well as other medicine schools and physician’s offices and clinics.
The center’s library has a collection of over 1 million tomes. When ready, it will feature a living area, a university library, an auditorium, and two exhibition areas – one of which will be permanent, displaying the nearly 60 years of the Projeto Xingu, a project through which the medicine school offers assistance to the Xingu indigenous peoples. The center aims to be open to the society, with admission-free activities to spread knowledge and disseminate health-related information.
Find out more about the project and how to donate at https://centroculturalemsaude.unifesp.br/como-doar
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Translated by Guilherme Miranda