THE DREAM THAT TOUCHES OUR HEARTS
“I have a kind of a duty, duty to dream, dream always, for by being more than a spectacle of myself, I must have the best show that I can. And as such, I build myself through gold and silk, in rooms assumed I invent a stage, the scenery where I live my dream among soft lights and invisible music�. Fernando Pessoa
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“To forget Chamado África, would be to lose my identity, change my personality, to erase a part of my dream.” Sandra Augusto Té Guinean student that lives in Brazil
Chamado África ABSTRACT The project Chamado África (The Call of Africa/ Calling: Africa) was designed by a group of Brazilian social changing agents and by college students from Guinea-Bissau that are residing in Brazil. Brazilian and Guinean youngsters are being enabled through technical support of many partners in the social sector, to experience the implementation of several social technologies in Brazilian communities, activity which will stimulate personal, social, professional and community development of young leadership also in the African continent. Young people have created this collaborative project on their own called Chamado África. It congregates Brazilian and Guinean youth´s dream for change. They´ve been united for the past two years through virtual and personal meetings, workshops, social actions and meaningful moments of integration resulting in a space of social transformation, cultural exchange and local development. Based on the experiences of the group, the social technology to be employed on the next phase of the project shall be the 6C´s of Innovation. Chamado África- 6C´s da Inovação & Liderança aims to strengthen the process of social change in the African Continent, starting with Guinea- Bissau. This social technology will identify and capacitate new change agents (partners) based on the 8 Millennium Development Goals. Beyond this, the initiative intends to intensify the cultural exchange between the two countries.
Justification We believe that encouraging youth leadership has showed to be an effective way to potentize the individual skills of people capable of transforming their realities. Therefore our work gains meaning through a chain reaction between active education for citizenship and community development, with the purpose of improving society as a whole. It is quite known that social development as well as education is not directly attached to economic development, in the same way as GDP indexes do not reflect life quality standards in all social spheres. On the contrary, concentrated economic growth has further sidelined the periphery, bringing in deeper and more complex
environmental
and
social
and
cultural
challenges and as a result, the human being is losing his sense of identity. Another aspect to be emphasized is that we can only have a better understanding of the structural dynamics of a community when we make it our single object of study. Hence, the "space" can be transformed by those who play a positive interference role in it. Thus, promoting a rediscovery of young people´s dreams and talents can make them realize the value and beauty of their own culture, and have them occupying their own space; regaining ethical and human values essential for the intellectual and socio development, as well as the fulfillment of their needs and wishes. Ultimately, it truly is a fundamental path to human happiness. Our work seeks to make people capable of discovering the best way of self- development, creation, relation with others and therefore pushes them towards a global development vision, which is in line with the 8 Millennium Development Goals.
GOALS OVERALL GOAL To spread the practice of social entrepreneurship and youth participation in 6 communities in Guinea-Bissau as a strategy for social change, though the empowerment of 152 young people between the ages of 18 and 30 years, and their turning into social change agents. This, based on the principles of the "6C's of Innovation" which encourages them to act autonomously and proactively, starting from their own potentialities and heading towards local and sustainable development, in order to contribute to the accomplishment of the eight millennium goals.
SPECIFIC GOALS To enhance the sense of youth empowerment and responsibility, through the acknowledgment of the participants and locals’ social technologies; To provide a safe environment for learning and cultural exchange between Brazilian and Guinean people, enabling the emergence of individual development, in a diverse and accessible manner; To offer a learning environment that encourages cooperation, diversity and protagonist youths; Awakening human values and appreciation of local culture, allowing young people to get in touch with their own ancestral identity; To present tools of entrepreneurial action to young participants; To stimulate the knowledge exchange of various kinds for the enrichment of activities and for the increase of the range of experience; Strengthening community relations with the young Brazilian and Guinean students living in Brazil Contributing to the development of the 8 Millennium Development Goals; To build a platform with a database of solutions and impact results of action plans developed within the 8 Millennium Development Goals from inside the communities;
COLLABORATORS’ SELECTION AND MAIN STEPS: Aiming towards an educational process as the axis of the elaboration of our methodology, so that the project’s collaborators can become the multipliers and disseminators of what they’ll experience during the 10 days of Chamado África – Jogo dos Malungos, the selection process will take place during the months previous to the action. It will be guided by inspirational methods that mix education, sustainability, community development and participative and interactive models, thus creating a unique learning process throughout the living experience period. Besides the six general coordinators, 10 facilitators, 10 social technicians and 50 Brazilian and Guinean collaborators residing in Brazil with ages between 18 and 30, have been recruited to participate in the action in Guinea-Bissau. Also, 76 collaborators residing in Guinea-Bissau have been chosen, and divided in the same way as the participants from Brazil. They have participated and will participate for eight months in meetings, capacity building and individual and collective actions as part of the selection process. The project is divided in three big steps:
R$488.490,80
•To send 76 collabrators leaving Brazil to join another 76 guinean collaborators, to work for 10 days on activities that contibute towards improving 6 communities' challenges. (12/2013 à 01/2014)
R$ 73.460,00
•To send 12 collaborators, six facilitators and six social technicians, to know the communities, contextualize the challenges,do capacity building for 20 multiplyers and develop a strategy for the improvement of the challenges alongside the local facilitators. (07/2013 à 08/2013)
R$ 7.346,00
•To send a person to live in a Guinean community for 15 days, for visiting communities, checking the viability of the project and establish partnerships with local and governmental organizations in Guinea Bissau. (12/2012 à 01/2013)
These are the main steps of the Project. Each step has been conceived based on the 6 C’s of Innovation and Leadership, through the participation of collaborators in a dynamic, interactive and cooperative manner.
METHODOLOGY
THE MALUNGOS’ GAME In order to make this process dynamic and entertaining, we have created a cooperative game, called the Malungos’ game, an expression from the African banto dialect which means travel partner or companion. The Malungos’ game is an illustration which portrays the path that the young participants will take through the activities, from their inscription/entry into the project until their arrival on Guinean grounds. This map was created by the art designer Gilson Ruiz ((www.whoizdesign.com.br) and the educator Gisela Sartori Franco (www.omagicodenos.com.br) with the objective of telling playfully the steps and proposed tasks for a larger involvement and interaction between the young participants, the facilitators and coordinators. The game is composed of six steps: 1. Individual Presentation; 2. Scheming with the Group; 3. Improving Skills; 4. Fund raising; 5. Alignment Meeting; 6. Hands on activities. In all the steps, facilitators guide the participants to accomplish tasks, and all the activities are created by the coordinators and facilitators, underlying concepts of cooperation and working in network. We encourage the development of personal skills such as: creativity, teamwork, dialogue, persistence, joy and co created artistic activities.
ACTION IN GUINEA-BISSAU
Historic Context of Guinea Bissau; Official Opening of Chamado África inGuiné Bissau.
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Presentation of each community's challenge and collaborators' capacity building; Creation of a plan to implement the 6 day action strategy; Cultural Exchange – BRAZIL & GUINEA BISSAU.
Displacement of the teams to the 6 chosen communities; Knowing and sharing with the community the action strategy for the next days; Establishing the goals, tasks, assignments, necessary materials and fund raising strategy to work on the chosen challenge; Taking care of the community and makng the plan happen.
9th and 10th day: CELEBRATION
Moments of Integration of the group
Division of teams and communities;
3rd to 8th Day: SHARING AND TAKNG CARE
1st Day: TO CELEBRATE AND CONTEXTUALIZE
Arrival and welcoming of the collaborators at the collective space in Bissau
2nd Day: Capacity Building and Creation
Collaborators are already being challenged to exercise concepts such as shared leadership, social transformation and protagonist youths during the building of this initiative through the Malungos’ game. Throughout the action in Guinea-Bissau, we will use the social technology of the 6 C’s of Innovation and Leadership. For ten days, the 100 collaborators will be stimulated by 40 facilitators and 12 planners to accomplish activities that improve the quality of life of the community members, based on the main challenges related to the 8 millennium goals, as faced in Guinea-Bissau. For the steps to be accomplished successfully, facilitators will use tools such as: circular dances, cooperative games, social project development, life project construction and cultural workshops. This will take the following steps:
Return of the teams to the collective base in Bissau; Moment for the groups to share the challenges and celebrate the victories that each team experienced in the communities; Evaluation of the whole process and futur projections for the sustainability of the actions accomplished in the communities; Celebration, Goodbyes and return.
We believe that by transmitting the knowledge acquired with the implementation of this social technology in the communities, collaborators will dedicate themselves for greater purposes: they will feel more capable of changing the world, and soon will be developing ideas of their own on the social issues of the communities located on the African continent.
CHRONOGRAM AND GOALS: JAN 2013
FEB 2013
MAR 2013
APR 2013
MAY 2013
JUN 2013
JUL 2013
AUG 2013
SEPT 2013
OCT 2013
NOV 2013
Field Verification/visit to Guinea-Bissau Beginning of the Malungos’ game /Youths formation Meetings with the planning team Start of the crowd fund raising STEP 2 Search of Institutional Partnerships Fund raising STEP 3 Mapping visit and mobilization of communities Accomplishment of the game in Guinea-Bissau Media Promotion Facilitators’ Formation Second collaborators Selection Malungos’ game in Brazil Implementation of the Project in Guinea-Bissau. Celebration Party Impact Assessment Report
OUR MAIN GOALS To mobilize over than 5.000 people online through “likes” To have 12 young people in the project planning team, six of them being from Brazil and the other six, from Guinea-Bissau To send a person from the coordination team to do the mapping and partnership articulation To do a video for online fund raising To do two facilitators’ formations, one in Guinea-Bissau and the other in Brazil To do capacity building with 20 collaborators for them to become group facilitators with a focus on community development To have 20 social development technicians as volunteers
To do a ten-day intervention, in six Guinean communities, with 50 collaborators selected in Brazil and 50 in Guinea-Bissau To raise at least BRL$ 60.000,00 through crowdfunding to send six facilitators and six technicians To raise R$ 480.000,00 to make the intervention viable, with 152 people in the selected communities To construct a transparent financial report and a video documenting the Project and our actions Elaboration of the Impact Assessment Report.
DEC 2013
6C's for INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP 1CONTEXTUALIZING 6CELEBRATION
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2CAPACITY
BUILDING-
3CREATION
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4CONTRIBUTION
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5CARE
"6C's of Innovation & Leadership" The social technology - "6C's of Innovation & Liadership" aims to format a methodology that helps in creating solutions to the challenges of the millennium in communities or families in vulnerable situation that have a larger share of their income in the informal market or are living in extreme poverty (below the poverty line). The innovation of this process is to be developed by young partners with an entrepreneurial profile to be acting as protagonists in the social change of a community or families and are willing to act for 6 months in voluntary actions.
1Contextualize:
2Capacitate:
3Create:
4Contribrution:
Local challenges mapping and diagnosis basing on the 8 Development Millennium Goals; Capacitate young people and partners; Creation of an idea, construction of an exclusive plan that will help to solve one of the 8 challenges regarding the Millennium Goals; Implementation of a partner idea with the family or the community;
Through a local intervention or monitoring in the community and developing an economic/social 5Care: Continuous attendance plan of each family, we want to create an impact and on the development and on the scale development through innovations in productive activities with the family or family and community activities that contribute to community; shared improvements in the conditions of community life and generate a large positive social impact. Each 6Celebrate: Evaluation and partner/ young person or group of partners (when it closure of the cycle between partner and the community and comes to a community) should diagnose the main sharing of solutions and results in challenge of the community or families basing on the the virtual platform. 8 millennium goals, later they will receive a training on social technologies and should use the methodology as 6Cs Innovation & Lidership basis to implement a plan of action during 6 months under a community or For each Innovation "C" we 6 families. will have a set of social technologies easy to replicate that should be After implementation, evaluation and impact shared with partners during a time of result, the partners/young entrepreneurs will share the results and the action plan developed in the training that will happen in 6 community or families on a virtual platform for others meetings of 6 hours long each. The project starts empowering to have access to and replicate. Thereby generating a set of solutions in a database with information on 6 partners monitoring 6 families challenges, solutions and action plans for each goal of each, or 6 partners who shall monitor community. Following the the millennium. A database created with the actions a and knowledge is shared, so we have a set of solutions experience, each partner commits and impact results accessible to every challenge of the another 6 people, which will reach 435 356 460 families in 10 years. millennium.
10 years 435.356.460 FAMILIES reached
A DREAM “I INSIST, I PERSEVERE, I RESIST, AND WON’T GIVE UP”
Graduated in Plastic Arts and ArtEducation, the social activist Pâmela Gaino is the coordinator of the Transformation Agents’ Network of the Geração MudaMundo program of Ashoka, and the mentor of the Chamado Africa project. “I am in love with everything that I do and everything that is related with youth and its transformation dreams. That is what moves my heart and inspires me every day. I am happy for being allowed to dream and help people accomplish their dreams”.
A DREAM It was like this, from a long desired childhood dream, that the social activist Pâmela Gaino built a project that has been managing to cross oceans and seas to become the first cooperative social transformation initiative led by young people. Thus, was born, in October 2011, the Chamado Africa project, which spreads in two countries – Brazil and Guinea-Bissau – the practice of young social entrepreneurship, by identifying and forming transformation agents in order for them to act relentlessly in their communities. Throughout the social actions she has been accomplishing in all of Brazil, Pamela met people who shared and enriched her dream, thus gathering, among Brazilians and Guineans living in Brazil and through virtual and in person mobilizations, more and more people around the same objective. After a year building this collective dream, the social activist has created the 6 C’s for Innovation and Leadership, a social technology based on her work experience with young people in communities. This innovative technology is the basis of the project’s development.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE THIS DREAM 100% YOURS?
HOW IT ALL STARTED The initial push was given by a Facebook group created by these passionate young people in 2011. Now, about 600 people participate in the Chamado Africa group in the social network, and the page has been liked by over 1080 users. By the way, social networks and digital technologies have become very recurrent tools in the gathering of these young people, who are spread in various Brazilian states and African cities. During the first year of the project, the young entrepreneurs studied the African continent and participated in more than 30 meetings, virtual or personal, and 14 formative meetings, and asked to over 500 other young people: “what does it take to make this dream 100% yours?� Stemming from the exchange of expectations, the young Brazilians and Guinean citizens living in Brazil shared experiences and tools for social transformation, and from that, developed an action plan for positive social impact to be accomplished in both countries. Among advisors, participant and facilitators, over 600 people took part in this initial phase. A result of this collective construction, the project also counts on the help of volunteers, who contribute for its constant improvement.
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WHY GUINEA-BISSAU? INAUGURAL EDITION
GUINEA-BISSAU: INAUGURAL EDITION The country chosen for the group to initiate its interventions in the African continent was Guinea-Bissau. After an extensive research made by the young participants on the continent, virtual seminars and presentations on each country, the group understood that they had to start with the Portuguese speaking countries, in order to facilitate communication and overall relations. Another important factor taken into account was the great number of Guinean students residing in Brazil – they amount to a total of over 1000 people, who can later convert themselves into major social actors in their territories. Besides, the current historic moment and the close relationship between the two countries’ embassies also favored the choice of Guinea-Bissau: “The African peoples brought to each of our nations their own contribution. We have a relationship [with African countries] that has to become ever stronger. We are looking at the root of our culture”, declared Dilma Roussef, the Brazilian president, during the opening of the meeting between leaders from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, in November 2011. “We have collectively decided that Guinea-Bissau will be the destination of the first edition of Chamado Africa project. In face of the current social and economic challenges that the country faces, we judge this is the appropriate moment for the start of a great social transformation. And after the field visits, we became even more convinced of it”, says Pâmela Gaino, adding that this vision is in accordance with the Brazilian government’s current position of supporting the country.
“We believe in this relationship which is why the Brazilian and Guinean youths decided to unite�, completes the social activist. Composed of over 30 different ethnic groups, Guinea-Bissau has a population of 1.5 million inhabitants, with diverse languages and costumes. The only official language in the country is Portuguese, spoken by only 14% of Guineans, while 44% use Creole to communicate. The ethnic and linguistic differences make a very rich and diversified cultural patrimony, with a great variety of customs, artistic expressions, professions, musical traditions and cultural manifestations. Dance is above all, the most significant artistic expression of many ethnic groups. Animist peoples are characterized by the beautifully colorful choreographies, during the cultural manifestations set for occasions such as harvest, weddings, funerals and initiation ceremonies. Although Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest countries in the world, it is the ninth world producer of cashew, being also a great exporter of fish and shellfish, peanut and wood. Besides, GuineaBissau owns an oil rich exploitation land, in conjunction with Senegal. The country has the approximate size of the Brazilian state of Sergipe and only has one public university. Education is one f the greatest challenges of the country, which has 53, 9% of its population analphabet, under precarious learning conditions. Young people have few opportunities in the local labor market, which creates a pressing urge for change and the acquiring of knowledge.
AFRICANNESS IN BRAZIL
AFRICANNESS IN BRAZIL: THE FIRST ACTIONS The challenges faced by the young participants during the studies and action plan building weren’t scarce. In order to overcome them, the participants acknowledged the importance to explore and share more on the theme of “Africanness in Brazil”, which resulted in a great virtual campaign- done in partnership with Brasilis Institute- to encourage initiatives that valued the African and Afro-Brazilian culture in schools, day cares, universities and communities in all of Brazil. In total, over 300 collaborators, from different regions in Brazil, signed in and 46 social actions were developed collectively. These actions were idealized and implemented by the participants themselves, with the monitoring of the Instituto Brasilis team, which gave all the necessary support for receiving material, registries, testimonies and the development of results’ reports. Supported by the high degree of creativity and commitment of the collaborators, the campaign reached over 15.000 people, in less than three months.
Action implemented in Fortaleza-CE in public municipal schools on the concept of hair and identity, the struggle against discrimination, prejudice and the appreciation of afro hairstyles in the educational and child universe, by forming a bond with them through the telling of stories. . Person Responsible: Marlene Santos
Action implemented at a school in São Paulo-SP, where children dove into the universe of African story telling. After each tale, children were led to draw their impressions and learnings. Person Responsible: Lúcia Makena
Action implemented in Parauapebas- PA with a local capoeira group which seeks to create interaction between the African culture and the indigenous Amazonian culture. The action took place at the margins of the Parauapebas river near the Carajás florest. Person Responsible: Antônia Frazão
Action implemented in Tejuçuoca-CE, where young people gathered to discuss African culture through videos and slides, and to finish, performed a traditional dance of African origins called Negro Nagô. People responsible: Myke Guilherme, Adriana Duarte e Pedro Diogo.
Action implemented in Sobral-CE,at the public square of a farther city district, where students of a local school where led to expose their works on Africanness engaged in playful activities on the theme, sang Afro songs and bore typical dresses. Person Responsible: Rosilene Araújo
NETWORK AND PARTNERSHIPS Besides the direct support of over 1.500 people, the Chamado África Project relies on a network of partners to help viabilize the Project. Among them: Brasilis Institute; Camerada project, Goára; Ashoka’s Geração MudaMundo project; Young Social Transformation Agents Network; Whoiz Design; Mágico de Nós; Asas Project; Nacional Council for Youth of Guinea-Bissau; Association of Guinean Students in Brazil; Guinean Youth Pastoral ; e-Jovem of Seduc-CE; Guinea-Bissau’s Embassy in Brazil; Brazilian Embassy in Guinea-Bissau; the Netos de Bandin Organiztion, also from Guinea-Bissau. You can become a part of this story, by making contact with one of our collaborators.
CONTACT FACEBOOK/CHAMADOAFRICA chamadoafrica@chamadoafrica.com chamadoafrica@gmail.com (85) 30446981 – Sandra Augusto (11) 960716981 – Pâmela Gaino (85)96406221 – Emanuelly Oliveira