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>X-POP3-Rcpt: media@outpost
>Return-Path: owner-devel-l@AMERICAN.EDU
>X-Sender: joaquim.moura@pop.persocom.com.br (Unverified)
>Date:         Fri, 31 May 1996 01:16:44 +0000
>Reply-To: Joaquim Moura <joaquim.moura@PERSOCOM.COM.BR>
>Sender: Technology Transfer in International Development
>              <DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
>From: Joaquim Moura <joaquim.moura@PERSOCOM.COM.BR>
>Subject:      Youth Citizenship and Development
>X-cc:         bb@partners.poa.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <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
>
>