Description

In Rio de Janeiro, youth live in a challenging environment. As other young people around the world, they are eager to participate in social processes and seek justice as they aspire for a brighter future for their communities.

Paulo Roberto, or simply Paulinho, is one of those. He believes that everyone can contribute, be an agent of transformation in their communities. Paulinho got involved with World Vision’s Citizen Voice and Action methodology in Brazil, and now serves as a National Committee Member of the program. CVA in Brazil has been contextualized into an initiative named MJPOP (Youth Monitoring Public Policies), which is focused on engaging young people to mobilize their communities and demand adequate execution of public services from the government.

Below, Paulinho shares about his experience.

“Uniting the youth in our community. That was our mission. We wanted to contribute with concrete actions in order to solve problems in our community. But we didn’t know how to put our energy toward transforming Complexo do Lins de Vasconcelos.

World Vision Brazil presented us with a methodology which would enable us to act politically through tangible exercises. This methodology helped us get organized and increase the participation of young people from the Area Development Programme (ADP) Amigos Para Sempre (Friends Forever) in political reflections and discussions on a local level.

Initially, we collected information about services that the local government develops in the area, so we could later research which public policies were connected with the available services.

We started believing that change was possible, so we intensified our work, always working along side other groups such as community based organizations and churches in order to strengthen our actions.

Today, the methodology is not only being implemented here, but in other Brazilian cities, where they have been achieving important results just like we are achieving here. We were able to share MJPOP with another group that is called Juventude em Acao (Youth in Action), from the ADP Comunha, in Nova Iguacu, Rio de Janeiro.

Our challenge now is to form MJPOP groups in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro. This city is affected by heavy rainfall in the summer and by corruption all year long.

A positive outcome that we have had is the presence of youth facilitating the community political process, which engaged community members in the resolution of problems. The mobilization has strengthened social work and motivated young people to participate more in the community in Complexo do Lins. The improvement of the dialogue between youth from these poor communities and the government is evident: our voice has been reaching political authorities in a strong and organized manner. Also, it is important to emphasize that youth engagement has allowed us to take over community associations and other local decision making capacities.

Nowadays, we are monitoring the work that will be done from Camarista Meier to Morro do Queto, which will impact 30,000 people. MJPOP is participating in the Council of Associations of Complexo do Lins, which unites 12 communities in the area. Our next steps are focused on expanding the network and making Lins de Vasconcelos the main region in which we will demand adequate execution of public policies.”