Message-ID: <19960531011637957.AAA118@smtp.persocom.com.br> Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 01:16:44 +0000 From: Joaquim Moura <mailto:joaquim.moura@PERSOCOM.COM.BR> Subject: Youth Citizenship and Development To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear Friends,To develop a country should mean to develop its populations, mainly the youth. If the youngsters are more citizenship concerned than their elders, then you can say we gotta actual development in that country...
I also have considered as an ironical joke to call Brazil and other "underdeveloped" countries as "developing countries", as became "correct" to refer, since the late 60s, to those poor - or rich but heavily exploited countries (from inside and from outside). One must be really very ironic our hypocrite to call these countries - where everything is decaying (faster than anywhere) - as "developing" countries.
But and anyway, something also is improving, thanks to those who believe that, if we struggle really hard and always, we will succeed changing our reality and future. Today, let me tell about a civic education program very interesting, which is being developed by the Legislative House of the Distrito Federal (Brasilia - the national capital - and twelve satellite cities around it, form the Federal District, right in the center of Brazil.
This program consists in taking the young students (average age around 9 to 11 years old) from the public schools (85%) and also from the private schools (15%) to visit the Legislative House and even to participate in a simulated legislative session, presenting and discussing projects of laws, solutions for the population etc.
Last Tuesday night, we had the monthly meeting of our committee - Brasilia / Washington DC Partners of the Americas - and we met Selma, young lady who is organizing the Citizen Education Program at the Legislative House of Brasilia. The program is bringing, every week, 80 young students to visit first and after come back to simulate a legislative working session. Till now, in three months since they started, they already brought 900 students, and each one came twice: first, every Monday, a class comes to attend a real legislative session; after, the next Friday, the same class comes back to simulate their legislative session.
Between the two visits, from Tuesday to Thursday, they have dedicated their time, at their schools, to discuss what they had seen, and prepare their own projects to be "voted" during the next visit.
The experience has been so successful and interesting, the projects presented by the students are so well conceived that some have already been transformed in real laws. And more: now, the board of the House decided to submit all the projects presented by the children to the Legislative advisory committee, and those considered viable will be presented to the real representatives' appreciation as proposals from the board.
The success is so evident, the representatives are all (government and opposition) are so impressed - that Selma and the House's board are planning to bring more classes during the week, using all the vacant hours when the representatives are not at the plenary, but at their offices etc.
But Selma also told that, although the success of the project, maybe they will not have money enough to repeat it next year. You know, money is getting shorter. For instance: she told they would like to have 20,000 to produce a video in 600 copies to be distributed among the more than 500 schools in the Federal District. The video will show how the actual and simulated sessions run at the Legislative House, allowing the students to perform the same activities at their schools. There are around 500 thousand students in Brasilia, and it is impossible to take them all to visit the Legislative House. Selma is exchanging ideas with the public relation staff of the Federal Senate and Federal House of Representatives, so there would be more two plenaries to be used by the students.
She also told us they will need around 130,000 to keep the project running the next year. They spend money with busing the children (round trip from the schools), with a small fast lunch for the students (juice and cookies), and with the "citizen's kit" that each student receives. Included in this kit there is a cap, a handout on citizenship, and many other interesting items. All they have written the same logo: "Sou cidadao". ("I am a citizen".)
Yamil (a Partner of ours) told Selma the possibility of getting money from civic education projects at the InterAmerican Development Bank, USAID and USIS.
More at our reach, I suggested to organize a follow up for the students, after the experience. Something as a newsletter, written by us and by the students. To foster them to keep their ideas about citizenship ever growing. To suggest activities as the NICEL (National Institute of Citizen Education in the Law - an American org.) ones.
Although I am very involved with a microcredit project in Santa Maria (a satellite city nearby Brasilia), and developing a community gardening program with the (ex) street children, and other poor youngsters, I perceive that civic education (in Brazil you should not use this expression - it reminds the military dictatorship jargon - prefer citizenship development) is so fundamental as environmental education or social awareness training...
Thank you for your interest.
Goodbye, Joaquim