Between 2005 and 2006, Promundo developed and led a project that involved young people to empower young women in Maré, Vila Aliança and Santa Marta, three low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In each community, one boy and one girl were selected as group coordinators, who subsequently mobilized five girls and five boys to participate in the project as young promoters. The project is known as “JPEG”, an acronym for “Young People for Gender Equality”, a name that was actually chosen by the participants themselves for the group that conducted the campaign activities in the communities.
For six months, these young people participated in educational workshops on gender, which involved group activities and visits to partner institutions in Rio de Janeiro. After this period, the group participated in 10 workshops for the participatory creation of the “Among Us” community campaign, which aimed to expand the reach of the discussions held in the project, broadcasting a radio soap opera, comic books and posters.
JPEG served as a transformation tool for most of the young participants, but for one of them, Gilmara Cunha, it was also the beginning of a journey of empowerment and the fight against homophobia and transphobia. Today, at age 31, she is the general coordinator of Grupo Conexão G, a civil society organization that works with the LGBT population living in favelas. Gilmara is a trans woman and through her own embodied experience of oppression, she works to promote the rights of the LGBT population living in favelas in Rio de Janeiro.
Gilmara says that, during her childhood, she was a child completely repressed due to her gender identity. She suffered repression from her family, her schoolmates, neighbors and before participating in JPEG, she even studied to become a friar in a Catholic Church fraternity in Rio de Janeiro.
Two years after this experience, Gilmara decides to leave the fraternity. Back in the community, against the wishes of her family, who saw the fraternity as a way to “fix” her, Gilmara gets in touch with the publicity of the project led by Promundo and decides to sign up.
During the course of the project, Gilmara experienced many homophobic and transphobic attitudes from the group itself. Realizing this, Vanessa Fonseca, coordinator of the workshops at the time, further adapted the project plan to intensify the approach to sexual diversity. This awareness-raising work, according to Gilmara’s report, was important for the group and even more so for her:
“Since then, I started to raise awareness, first of all, accepting myself, because, due to family oppression and repression, I was already repressing myself from an early age. So I needed to have something that gave me a base. I go through a process of training, of instrumentalization by Grupo Arco-Íris, and also with the support of Vanessa at JPEG, and I begin to identify myself, to discover my paths and to see that it is not a disease, that it is not a evil thing. And then I start to discover that there are other groups, other people who also had the desire that I had. Promundo created this safety bubble for me to feel more comfortable.”
From then on, Gilmara, still with a male gender identity, called Gilmar at the time, began to develop the desire to build a group that would discuss the issue of the LGBT population in favela territory, addressing the struggle for survival as a priority demand, to then think about the process of educational training, employability, and guaranteeing other rights. But, at the same time, he also thinks about another transformation – that of his family. This is how Grupo Conexão G begins to consolidate itself, with its members thinking about how to respond to the LGBT issue at home and abroad, a movement that Gilmara points out as an influence on her participation in JPEG.
After living in the “safe space” – how she defines what Promundo was at the time of JPEG for her – Gilmara reported having gone through a series of transformative processes, and her trajectory of activism was no different. As part of the changes that occurred in her life, Gilmara also went from participating in a Promundo project to partnering with the organization as general coordinator of Grupo Conexão G. About the partnership, she comments:
“If today we can work as partners, the two institutions, this is a reflection of this relationship built. An equal relationship. Just because Promundo has existed for longer doesn't mean it's better than Conexão G. Promundo puts itself in the other's eyes and shoes. I can see that there is a methodology being implemented at Promundo – Paulo Freire’s methodology. You teach, but at the same time you learn. This makes us increasingly comfortable in pleading and proposing projects in partnerships and building more and more collectively. It's taking away this view that the favela is a space where you only harvest and don't create a bond. Promundo already brings a different perspective. In a way, we manage to build more and more bonds of partnership and companionship.”
Currently, Promundo and Conexão G are conducting a research and intervention project that addresses the business employability of the LGBT community. But the partnership doesn’t just happen in this project. The two institutions have already worked together on a research project on access for the LGBT population living in favelas to health units and on Maré Diversity Week, among other projects. For Gilmara, this is the result of how much more and more the two institutions are allying themselves. She also believes that the experience with Conexão G brought transformations to Promundo, which is increasingly open and with more in-depth work on LGBT issues.
The transformation that Gilmara is currently bringing through her work at Conexão G, in addition to having an impact on the territories that receive awareness, has just received great recognition. Gilmara is the first transsexual to receive the highest honor from the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Tiradentes Medal for her activism and her work in Grupo Conexão G.
The view that Gilmara has on the work carried out by Conexão G is very sensitive and has been building a legacy of learning about the valorization process
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