Description

Young Brazilians make a difference and promote transformation

By Reinaldo Almeida

The Youth Want to Live!

Salvador, capital of Bahia, is the Brazilian city with the highest population of Afro-Brazilians, who were brought to Brazil as slaves in ships known as Tumbeiros (tomb ships). Many died en route, but those who survived left their mark of originality and the strength of their culture. For this reason, Salvador was recently declared the “Afro-Brazilian Capital” of Latin America. In the neighborhoods of Salvador, the color of the skin and Afro-Brazilian culture are sources of pride for the youth.

But Salvador is also a poor and troubled place. In the past ten years, the rate of mortality of adolescents and young people in Bahia more than doubled. More than four thousand adolescents and young people die each year in this Brazilian city. Most of them are suburban blacks.

To be black and young in Salvador is to be highly vulnerable. The same is true in the community of Cajazeiras, where World Vision has been active for six years. The youth from Cajazeiras are highly aware of this situation. They know that the source of the violence against them is the great social inequity that still troubles the region.

In light of the situation around them, around 40 youth recently joined together to create the group “Jovens Desenvolvimento da Comunidade”, or “JDC” (“Young People Developing the Community”). They formed the group in order to improve the quality of life in their neighborhood.

In the beginning, the JDC youth lacked confidence, to seek the transformation they were after. Then, in 2010, that the World Vision Area Development Programme in Cajazeiras introduced an approach called “MJPOP” (“Monitoramento Jovem de Politicas Publicas”) (or “Youth Monitoring of Public Policies”).
MJPOP is a Brazilian adaptation of the “Citizen Voice and Action” approach (citizenvoiceandaction.org) that World Vision supports in 411 programmes in 43 countries around the world. In Brazil, youth in Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza and Ponto dos Volantes had already applied MJPOP to achieve encouraging results to influence policy and improve the effectiveness of municipal public services. In recognition of these results, World Vision Brazil was awarded the RENAS (“Rede Evangélica Nacional de Ação Social”) Best Practice award and the Social Technology Certification from the Bank of Brazil Foundation in 2011.

The Youth Want Rights!

The Cajazeiras group welcomed the MJPOP approach and sent representatives to participate in a national-level training in February of 2011. In the following months, the group started to implement the phases and steps of the methodology. To support them, World Vision contacted an activist and local hip hop artist named Jasf Andrade. Jasf,25 years old at the time, was already a recognized youth leader from the Sussuarana community, who used his rap songs to explore social injustice in Brazil and the marginalization of impoverished communities. In his words, learning about MJPOP represented “the discovery of a very strong approach, a social tool that could really help to empower communities to demand their rights. The things we explore and demand in the rap lyrics, the MJPOP methodology makes these things happen in the practice”.
To decide which public policy they would monitor, the adolescents and young people sought the opinions of the broader Cajazeiras population about which public services were most in need of improvement. This research was undertaken in May of 2011, with responses from 100 residents. Many problems were identified by the population, such as the lack of garbage collection (6%) and the lack of doctors and medicines in the health center (49%). However, after further analysis, the group chose to work on education policy, and focus on the improvement of the Municipal School of Ricardo Pereira. 45% of the surveyed respondents had prioritized the school because many of them had studied there and remembered how bad it was. The poor infrastructure of the school prevented even the most basic activities. In fact, during the rainy days, water poured through the school walls and flooded the classrooms. Residents recognized that the school should become a space to spread knowledge and culture and improve social cohesion for the children of the community.

In the next step of the MJPOP approach, the youth mapped partners and built relationships. The group was pleasantly surprised by the welcome they received from the school board and its faculty. In particular, the Director, Prof. Hamilton Souza, explained how badly the school needed this partnership with the community in order to move forward. He stated that he had sought the support from community leaders for a long time, but without much success. He was happy that the young people from Cajazeiras, some of whom had studied in that space, had returned to the school not as beneficiaries, but as benefactors who could help create a better learning environment for the neighborhood’s children.
The youth formalized an alliance with the school administration and set about mobilizing the community for the struggle. Towards this end, the youth organized an “MJPOP in Action” event, in which several local arts and cultural figures performed at the school. This free event was designed to raise awareness among residents about the school’s problems and persuade them that, by working together, they could transform the situation.
The event was a success. The group, and their “MJPOP” approach became well-known in the community. Residents now knew that the youth were committed to the struggle to improve the situation of Cajazeiras.

Youth Mobilized for Child Well-being!

In the beginning, many residents didn’t think it was possible to persuade the government to respond to the school’s troubles. According to Ricardo Pereira, 16, “when we started to act and decided to improve the situation at school, I thought that we were on our own, that we were going to have to fix what was bad. And I was even willing to do that. But in the MJPOP training sessions, I started to understand that it is the government’s responsibility to maintain our schools. I learned that we do our part when we pay our taxes and that we have to demand that this money be used for quality public services”.
With this new understanding, the young people went to the Salvador City Council, to ask their representatives to act. Not all of the city councilors were responsive, but the office of the Councilwoman Marta Rodrigues, from the Partido dos Trabalhadores (“Brazillian Worker’s Party”), welcomed the group. She scheduled a visit to the Cajazeiras community.

This visit by Councilor Rodrigues expanded the political horizon for the youth. Before the visit, the universe of politics was inaccessible and restricted to occasional elections. But they began to realize that politicians are the public’s representatives and employees, who have their salaries and expenses paid by the population. They learned that politicians should be available to listen to the concerns of their constituents.
The relationship with Councilwoman Rodrigues was crucial to the youth’s efforts to pressure the government to improve Ricardo Pereira Municipal School. As soon as she met the group, Marta declared that her mandate was “from the people” and that she wanted to know how her position in the legislature of Salvador could support the MJPOP group. In her own words, “I identify with the struggle here in this region and was very happy to see the youth organized to monitor public policies, since this is the only way that we will overcome the challenge of applying public money in the best possible way for the wellbeing of the community”.

Now the youth had built strong relationships with the service providers of the school itself and their elected representative. They were also well known by the local population as a result of the events they had held and the coverage of the events on the internet.
Next, the youth returned to the field and carried out a social audit with the service providers, the school’s students, and their parents. This analysis helped the group understand the details of the school’s problems and to focus their policy influence. Most importantly, the group decided to focus on the school’s infrastructure, which was identified as problematic by 100% of the respondents. 90% of respondents also mentioned the low quality of the school meals and 10% mentioned also problems with the teaching quality.
The reports emerging from the social audit were alarming: on rainy days, students suffered small electrical shocks when touching the school walls. Improving this situation was going to be tricky; 3 years earlier, the school had been renovated with resources from Salvador city hall, but the renovation had still failed to solve the severe structural problems and proved to be a disappointing waste of public resources. The youth and service providers recognized that it was going to be difficult to acquire support for yet another renovation of the school, but the group and community were determined to do whatever was necessary.
Youth Catalyze the Community’s Transformation!
With this analysis complete, the youth and their partners met to map their strategy to improve the school and guarantee a minimum of dignity for Cajazeiras children. Roughly 70 activists participated in the meeting, many of whom had attended the school themselves. During the meeting, the community used a “community score card” to validate the results of the social audit they had undertaken and build broader community ownership.
But community organizing is not easy, and the youth began to understand the complexity of the process. In an illustration of the community’s troubles, a drunk man entered the room, took charge, and severely disrupted the discussions. At first, the two youth who were leading the discussions did not know how to take control of the meeting again. But the boys kept positive attitude, regained their leadership, and ultimately steered the meeting back on track.
With their goal clearly defined, the youth leaders encouraged the participants to identify ways to persuade the municipal government to fund the school’s renovation.. Two suggestions were affirmed by the group: first, to deliver a petition to the local residents’ association; second, to persuade the local residents’ association to deliver the petition and an accompanying letter to the the Municipal Department of Education and city council. The letter would be framed within the context of Brazilian law, which prioritizes children and youth, and request an allocation from the annual budget for the needs of the community children.

The community’s commitment, and the way in which the community grounded constructive dialogue around rights sparked the attention of the municipal government. While the youth were still gathering more signatures from residents, the accompanying letter had already been delivered to the state legislature of Bahia..
Empowered by the political support from the community, Councilwoman Marta Rodrigues asked the Municipal Department of Education for resources from the city construction budget in order to support the renovation requested by the Cajazeiras community.

A little more than a month following the delivery of the document (in May of 2012), the City Hall of Salvador began renovating the school. The commencement of construction served as a political milestone for the group and renewed the community’s hope that it is possible to build a better future when we work together.

According to councilwoman Rodrigues, “After receiving the youths’ request, our office contacted the Municipal Department of Education, and documented the need to renovate the school, always referring to the mobilization done through the MJPOP process. Without the youth’s monitoring, the school’s condition would have been lost at the Education Department, because there are a great number of demands being presented there every day. I consider the mobilization done through the MJPOP process as significant progress, which has advanced reform and improved the confidence of teachers, students, administrative staff and the community.”

The School is Shockproof, It Can Rain All Year long!

Eight months later, the renovation was complete. The wall no longer gives shocks. Rain or shine, nothing prevents children from studying at Ricardo Pereira Municipal School. Mission accomplished for MJPOP in Salvador? No, not yet.

“We know that to work in the community and to improve things here is very important, but we also know that the causes of most problems in the community are not from inside, but outside. We have to attack the causes if we want to achieve social justice” claims Jasf Andrade.
For this reason, he wrote a rap that addresses the resilience of the community and critiques the economic system that seeks profit at the expense of people and planet . The song was presented during the Conference for the Sustainable Development, “Rio+20”. His music later became a video-clip for the group Os Agentes, in which Jasf is the lead singer, and included participation by MJPOP members. The video has received more than eight thousand hits on YouTube. Since then, the video has been exhibited during a public hearing of the city council of Rio de Janeiro, where the Rio+20 conference was held and at an event on global development in Istanbul, Turkey..
More recently, the group has studied the Millenium Development Goals and participated in several dialogues related to the next development framework. Together with other MJPOP members from 10 Brazilian states, the youth have sought to influence the next development framework and ensure sufficient quality of education as a means to overcome inequality. The youth’s experience at Ricardo Pereira Municipal School has undoubtedly influenced their perspective.
To be young, black, and an MJPOP member in Salvador is to be, overall, an activist. They are activists in the struggle to end violence against you with the weapons of peace, mobilizing transformation, choosing dialogue for the common good, critiquing systemic inequality, but also being able to engage artistically and culturally, such as through the lyricism of hip-hop music, and tell of the strength of a movement that is growing and transforming not only in Bahia, but also in many other parts of Brazil:

Historia Real, MJPOP
(MJPOP, a True Story)
(Jasf Os Agentes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uiUAATcUpI&list=UU84l4Wm8Px9JGuQdpDodi4Q&index=3

Diversos líderes, adolescentes e jovens
(Several leaders, adolescents and young people)
Problemas resolvidos, sem usar um revólver.
(Problems solved, without using a weapon).
Personalidades que darei o nome adiante,
(Personalities who I’ll further name),
Mas pra você entender,
(But for you to understand),
Vou te falar sobre, antes.
(I’ll have, first, to explain).
2007, Rio de Janeiro, Zona Norte,
(2007, Rio de Janeiro, Northern Area),
No Complexo do Lins, havia um grupo de jovens.
(In Complexo do Lins, there were a group of younglings),
Participavam da ONG, interagiam com a Igreja,
(Participating in the NGO, interacted with the church),
E viviam a comunidade e sua beleza.
(And lived their community and its beauty).
Questionavam o sofrimento, a pobreza,
(Questioning the suffering, the poverty),
Falta de água, o lixo, violência na redondeza.
(Lack of water, the garbage, violence surrounding in).
Inquieto desejo e sede de mudança.
(Uneasy desire and thirst for some changing).
O que fazer , como ajudar toda a vizinhança?
(What to do, how to help all the neighborhood)?
Até que um ativista traz uma pista, uma dica,
(Until an activist brings a clue, brings a hint),
Uma proposta de atuação política.
(A proposal of political acting).
Iniciativa que empodera adolescentes e jovens,
(Initiatives that empower adolescents and young people),
O grupo abraça, em pouco tempo, a turma já resolve
(The group embraces in little time, they soon decided)
Monitorar o abastecimento de água,
(To monitor the water supply),
Porque na comunidade todo dia faltava.
(Cause in the community it was always lacking).
Problema principal que na pesquisa apontava,
(Major problem pointed in the survey),
Os moradores descrentes quase se mudavam.
(Residents disbelieving almost changing places).
Foram dois anos, grupo de jovens atuando.
(Almost two years, groups of younglings acting.)
Manual, passo-a-passo, iam executando.
(Step by step manual, they kept executing.)
Na reunião comunitária surge o plano de ação,
(In the communitarian meeting arises a plan of action)
Perceberam que o forte era comunicação.
(they realized their strength was in communication).
Mobilização das lideranças, dos moradores,
(Mobilization of leaderships, of residents),
Dos grupos organizados pra falar das suas dores.
(Of organized groups to talk about their pain).
Compreender os processos, juntos poder cobrar...
(To understand the processes, together they could reclaim)…
Como fiscalizar, como e onde reclamar?
(How to supervise, how and where to complain)?
Resolvido o problema da falta de água. E o que aponta?
(Solved the problem of water shortage. And what it shows?)
Voz, informação, diálogo, ação e prestação de contas.
(Voice, information, dialogue, action and accountability).
Elementos principais norteiam a aplicação,
(Main elements guide the applicability),
Foram várias conquistas. Segue a luta, irmão!
(Many things achieved, but the fight goes on, brother!)
Há uma luz nos olhos, da forca pra lutar e vencer.
(There’s a sparkle in the eyes, strength to fight and win another.)
O brilho intenso de um sonho que resplandece em você.
(The intense glare of a dream that shines upon you).
E bom estar com você, acreditar em você!
(It’s good to be with you, to believe in you!)
Fazer acontecer em todo lugar, eu sei que pode ser!
(To make it happen everywhere, I know it can be!)
Experiência bem sucedida, bem-vinda,
(Well-successful welcomed experience,)
A Visão Mundial, então, resolve espalhar.
(World Vision, then, chooses to spread out)
Essa parada é um norte de vida, é vida!
(This deal is a compass for life, it is life!)
Vai pra Minas Gerais e também Ceará.
(Go to Minas Gerais and also Ceará).
Se fortalece, ganha corpo e ganha ação,
(It gains power, strength, its action is fortified),
Na Bahia, monitora a saúde e educação.
(In Bahia, monitors health and education.)
Em Pernambuco, é forte; está na Amazonas, no Norte,
(In Pernambuco, it’s strong; It’s in the North, in Amazon,)
Na Paraíba, no Rio Grande do Norte.
(In Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte).
Umas meninas contentes, uns pivetes decentes,
(Some girls glad, some decent rascals),
Alagoas, São Paulo também, “com nós”, está rente.
(Alagoas, São Paulo too, “with us”, talking straight.)
Pro bem estar das crianças, vida digna para todos,
(For the children wellbeing, a worth life for all,)
Nossa voz já ecoa em outras partes do mundo.
(Our voices echo in all parts of the world).
Mando um salve pra toda comunidade (salve!),
(I give kudos to all the community (kudos!),
Que se mantém viva, luta pela cidade.
(Who stays alive, fighting for the city).
Escola ruim, posto medico não atende
(Bad schools, medical station does not work)
Não fizeram a praça que prometeram pra gente...
(They didn’t build the square they promised us they would)…
Organizados, nós vamos saber porque não foi feito,
(Organized, we will know why it wasn’t done),
Junto com a comunidade, esse bagulho tem efeito.
(Together with the community, this stuff will be effective).
Vereadora explica, o secretário promete,
(Congress woman explains, secretary promises),
Nós vamos acompanhando, o órgão publico se mexe.
(We will keep following, the government moving).
São varias conquistas, nas vinte e duas cidades,
(Several achievements, in the twenty two cities),
Nossa arma o diálogo e a comunidade
(Our weapon is the dialogue and the community)
Uma praça nova, água chega pra todos,
(A new square, water supplied to everyone),
Escola não dá mais choque, pode chover o ano todo.
(School is shockproof, it can rain the whole year long.)
Há uma luz nos olhos, da forca pra lutar e vencer.
(There’s a sparkle in the eyes, strength to fight and win.)
O brilho intenso de um sonho que resplandece em você.
(The intense glare of a dream that shines upon you).
E bom estar com você, acreditar em você!
(It’s good to be with you, to believe in you!)
Fazer acontecer em todo lugar, eu sei que pode ser!
(To make it happen everywhere, I know that this can be!)
36 grupos espalhados no Brasil,
(36 groups spread throughout Brazil),
Fruto de muita luta, já somos quase mil
(result of many struggles, we are more than a thousand)
Indiretamente, interfere na vida de milhares
(Indirectly, interfering in the life of tens of thousands)
Resolvemos as ondas, só que problemas são mares.
(We resolved the waves, but problems are oceans).
Não existiria nada disso sem os meninos e as meninas,
(None of this would have happen without the boys and the girls),
Não existiria nada disso sem Maria Carolina!
(None of this would exist without Maria Carolina!)
Não existiria nada disso sem Serginho, Paulinho,
(None of this would exist without Serginho, Paulinho),
Sem avaliarmos processos com Raniere, o tio!
(Without evaluating processes with Raniere, the Uncle!)
Sem a forca de Amanda, a luta de David,
(Without the strength of Amanda, the fight of David),
Inteligência de Ed, Julie e Tathy, Recife,
(The brains of Ed, Julie and Tathy, Recife),
Hilquias e Bárbara representando o Amazonas,
(Hilquias and Barbara representing Amazonas),
Um salve a Ponto dos Volantes, a líder é a Adriana.
(Cheers to Ponto dos Volantes, their leader is Adriana).
Rafaela Pontes, Natálias ao quadrado,
(Rafaela Pontes, Natálias squared),
Joyce de Fortaleza e Carol Prado.
(Joyce from Fortaleza and Carol Prado).
Danilinho e Delma, todos os que estão passando,
(Danilinho e Delma, all those who are passing through),
Não seria possível sem os que estão chegando.
(Wouldn’t be possible without those who are arriving too).
A alegria de Ozelia, mesmo nas horas serias:
(The joy of Ozelia, even in serious times):
-Isso não, meu irmão, só podia ser Ozélia!
(-Not this, no my brother, it could only be Ozélia!)
Welinton Pereira e Mônica tem o nosso conceito
(Welinton Pereira and Monica we appreciate you)
Quem não citamos um abraço, para as meninas, um beijo.
(those we did not mentioned a hug, to the girls, a kiss).
Mas o que somos hoje? Um grupo, uma rede?
(But what are we today? A group, a network?)
Um principal movimento que por justiça tem sede?
(A major movement thirsty for justice)?
Fica no ar a questão...
(Question is in the air…)
Somos do Hip-hop, nosso abraço sincero ao MJPOP.
(We are from Hip-Hop, our sincere hug to MJPOP).
Não existiriam conquistas faltando um de vocês
(There would be not achievements if any of you was missing).
E nada se manteria sem a energia de Rei!
(And nothing would remain without our King’s energy!)