On July 20th, young men, between 13 and 18 years old, participants in the “Praticando Esporte, Winning in Life” project, participated in a workshop to create a campaign that will address topics such as equal relationships between girls and boys , preventing violence against women and children and combating racism.
The workshop began with the showing of the video Minha Vida de João , providing the basis for a group discussion to encourage questioning about what it means to be a man. Participants were then divided into two groups to create profiles of young boys from the Guararapes community, as part of the campaign creation.
After creating the profiles, the group defined that the campaign will aim to make visible and promote the prevention of various types of violence and prejudice, recognizing their connections, to promote equality in gender and racial relations in the Guararapes community. Other meetings will be held to finalize the creation of the campaign, which will be implemented in the community with support from the Promundo team.
Racism under discussion
During the workshop, the young people reported an experience they had with the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro the previous week, returning from a friendly match promoted by the project with the team from the Young Christian Association (ACM), in the same age group.
On that occasion, two police officers approached the group, who were uniformed in the project's shirt, and selected two boys to carry out a search. The professor who was responsible for the group, Leonardo Brasil de Melo, had to explain to the police that he was with them returning from a friendly match promoted by the project. Only then were they released. One of the boys was even threatened with physical violence.
As the group itself indicated, the selection criteria for the magazine was based on the racist stereotype that places young black people in the position of potential criminals. It was yet another situation of racism, experienced by so many other young black people in Brazil, who are humiliated, tortured and killed daily by police officers who are rarely punished for these crimes.
All this discussion led the group to choose to also address the promotion of equity in racial relations as a campaign theme.
About the project
“Praticando Esporte, Winning in Life” is a project offered by Promundo for children and adolescents from the communities of Guararapes and Maré, which combines Portuguese, Mathematics and English tutoring, gender and sexuality awareness workshops and sports practice, with funding from Comic Relief and KNH.
Participatory Campaign
As our H and M methodologies suggest, after young people participated in awareness-raising workshops on gender and sexuality as project activities, they were invited to participate as producers in a community campaign. During meetings with Promundo's technical and communications team, young people will participate in dynamics that will help them think together about the concept, messages, audience and elements of the campaign. The result is a community mobilization that takes into account the language and approach appropriate to the public, based on communication between peers.
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