A Crucial Element: Foster an OER Community Policy cannot and should not be seen as an end in itself. The relevance of policy, specifically in the Brazil case, is (i) to regulate how the government uses its copyrights to educational resources that it funds directly and indirectly and (ii) to ensure that such materials are made available in a way that is efficient and transparent, and are freely accessible by the general public, teachers, students and self-learners (in particular), via the Internet. The adoption of OER policy, besides solving the issue of public access to publicly funded resources, recognises that OER has the potential to realise more fully the constitutional mandate of the right to education, since it offers the possibility of access to learning for everyone and particularly for non-traditional groups of students, such as those in adult education or whose lifestyle does not allow participation in traditional institutional routines. Thus, it can widen participation in education, promote lifelong learning and bridge the gaps between non-formal, informal and formal learning. However, policy without social acceptance and change tends to be worth no more than the paper it is written upon. Taking this into consideration, the OERBrazil Project has commenced extensive work to foster the birth, growth and independence of an OER community in Brazil. In that work, the OER-Brazil Project creates connections with opinion leaders from sister communities — such as the free software community, open access community and librarians, amongst others — and leaders identified within the OER community, to contribute to OER awareness-raising and project development. For that, a constant presence in social media is crucial, but so are regional workshops, conferences, participation in digital culture related events, such as Campus Party or the Digital Culture Forum, and meetings.61 Such activities have developed better understandings of regional issues and needs, and helped the OER-Brazil Project to build a dialogue with regional communities of educators, students, policy makers and other stakeholders to assist them in appropriating open education and OER topics for their realities. These meetings continue and allow us to build a clearer and more appropriate understanding about how OER methodologies, projects and ideas could contribute to meeting regional needs. Additionally, the OER-Brazil Project has been working both proactively (identifying needs and opportunities) and reactively (receiving questions and requests for support) with institutions. This has included ongoing work with schools like Porto Seguro and Dante Alighieri in São Paulo,62 institutes such as Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados,63 individual projects, and non-profit organisations such as Educarede and Sempreviva (an organisation focussed on feminist rights), amongst others, to develop and adopt OER practices and projects. Often, such work is focussed on the implementation of a Creative Commons license or a change from a more to a less restrictive license. In this work, the OERBrazil Project specifically provides training on licensing educational resources openly, using platforms such as Connexions to collaborate, and creating strategies for open business models64 based on OER (Rossini, 2010b). Finally, the OER-Brazil Project believes that collaboration with international initiatives, communities and discussions are relevant and provide legitimacy to community and policy efforts, besides allowing us to be on top of the most current
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