In five months, Silva tells me, she learned how to talk and dress differently and acquired tools for getting out of the favela. No more low-cut tops and hip-hop slang; perched on the edge of an armchair, her shiny black hair slicked back in a ponytail, Silva wears a demure blouse and no makeup. She has learned, she says with obvious pride, to say "good afternoon" to guests with a smile on her face. At first, she says, it felt strange to jump back and forth from her life in the favela to this glittering world; it was uncomfortable when her mother told her that she had changed. But Silva is at ease with her new self. "I don't want to go back to my old life," she says. For now, she works in the housekeeping department, doing turn-down duty, putting chocolates on guests' pillows. One day she hopes to become a manager: "I have entered a world that I don't want to leave."

Despite my initial skepticism, I find that Marriott's commitment to making a difference in Brazil seems to go well beyond token gestures and window dressing: Managers literally get teary when they tell me about time spent with the young recruits—all of whom, so far, have gotten jobs with Marriott or other companies. After three years of success, Marriott has persuaded other hotels—the InterContinental, the Crown Plaza, the Copacabana Palace, and several local companies—to launch the program. It's clear from talking with graduates in both São Paulo and Rio that it is changing lives. "It starts opening up their minds to a whole different world," says Rahul Vir, general manager of the São Paulo Renaissance Hotel, which is owned by Marriott.

Accor, the French company that owns Sofitel, Novotel, and Ibis hotels, is also making a difference in Brazil. In São Paulo's Favela do Gato, or Cat Slum, twenty-three-year-old Luciana Silva (no relation to the Marriott employee) tells me that a few years ago there was almost no other place as hopeless as this one: It was just tin-and-paper shacks literally sliding down the banks of a polluted river. The residents, mostly paper and aluminum collectors, had jury-rigged electricity but lived without plumbing. When it rained, Silva's home flooded. She couldn't work, because there was no place to put her baby son. That was before the city tore down the shanties and built a row of bright-blue concrete apartment buildings.

Then Carla Beira, who runs Accor's Brazilian social programs, swept in like a tornado. She persuaded Accor, with 120 hotels and a catering business in Brazil, to invest $750,000 in building a preschool. Silva, who lives in a two-room apartment with her husband and baby, now works at the school, and her four-year-old son eats all his meals there. "It was terrible before," says Silva, "but now my son is in a clean, beautiful place." Beira blows kisses as she marches into the building, calling the children by name. Several of them cling to her legs. "We appreciate the pain of the people around us," she says. "The community gives us so much, and we believe we have to give back." Remarkably, there is not even a sign on the door to tell visitors that Accor is involved.