28 October 2008

Carapicuíba, Brazil: UNV and its partners in Brazil are harnessing school volunteers to raise awareness of nutrition and Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number one: 'Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger'.

The 'I learn, I teach' programme in cooperation with the NGO Conexão - Serviço de Integração Social aims at disseminating and implementing the MDGs, especially goal number one. The emphasis is on the promotion of healthy nutrition and the fight against malnutrition; funding comes from food card company CBSS - Administradora dos Cartões Visa Vale.

On World Food Day on 16 October 2008 the school volunteers initiated a debate on food security, with a workshop and fair on good nutrition. The event included a workshop discussing food security and the human right to food, plus a fair with exhibitions from participating schools, NGOs, local government and civil society.

Research conducted by volunteers of the Agente Jovem programme in 2005 had revealed the extent of under-nutrition in the city of Carapicuíba in the São Paulo area. The 'I learn, I teach' project thus started in 2006.

Coordinated by a national UNV volunteer since 2007, it involves groups of around five volunteer pupils and their teachers from 10 Carapicuíba schools. These groups are trained on awareness-raising techniques and go out into their communities to spread knowledge.

Women are the main target group of the information campaigns as they are often responsible for the purchase and preparation of food, whether for their families or as school cooks etc. Furthermore, the majority of volunteers – both students and teachers - are female too.

The strategy has developed local self-esteem and trained populations to improve their own situations, says UNV volunteer Alessandra Preto who has been running the project since 2007. Existing activities may in future be replicated in other communities or municipalities with similar socio-economic structures, she notes.

"As a UNV volunteer my major challenge leading this project was to get it working in only six months," observes Ms. Preto. "The first and most difficult step was to convince 10 schools, their pupils and teachers to turn the project into reality."

Asking herself how to get schools to join in, her response was "to really believe in the programme and to transmit this confidence to all of the volunteers, let’s say, to let them know that it would be possible."

Before implementing the projects, the pupils conducted field research in their communities and schools. “We verified that knowledge on concepts of nutrition and under nutrition was almost non-existent among the communities," says Taisa da Silva, 16, from Hadla Ferez school. "In general, people thought that these concepts are exclusively related to the weight of a person, but in fact they depend on different factors. In addition, they had very little knowledge on how to make a better use of food,” she continues.

Based on their surveys, each group of pupils identified regional needs and developed activities to spread specific information among communities. The pupils acting as volunteers were inspired not only to develop proposals, but to implement and evaluate them. This permitted the discovery of capacities and local talents, and the identification of leaders.

"We were able to show what we are capable of and did not even notice that we managed to develop a project on our own," observes Jéssica, a pupil at Maria M. de Noronha school. She took part in the sub-project ‘Combating malnutrition together', giving speeches on adequate nutrition in 17 classes of her school and distributing flyers containing information on malnutrition around her community.


Video links (external site - open in new window):

Invitation for the closing ceremony in 2007, produced by UNV volunteers Beatriz Sierra and Alberto Fernandez with the participation of volunteer pupils.

Compilation of activities realized by the schools; the video was shown during the closing ceremony in 2007, produced by UNV volunteer Alberto Fernandez.