by Chiara Lenza

02 January 2008

"Built on sandy hills with 328 sunny days, one of the Brazilian favorite place for tourists looking for relax and good beaches". This is what I read nine months ago on Google search, just a moment after the phone had rung and a voice on the other part had told me that my duty station would have been this Brazilian northeast coast city.

Today, after 10 months living here, letting my life be permeated 24 hours a day by this reality, when I think about that moment a strange smile appears on my face. It is the smile of knowledge, the smile of change.

During this period I have been working with a local NGO, Natal Voluntários, partner of UNV, developing the Program “Bringing the Millennium Development Goals to the community”. In particular, I have assumed the responsibility for the implementation of the project “Universitário do Milênio”, according to which groups of university students define a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and a community where to implement a list of defined actions linked to that MDG area. My main task has been monitoring and attending 350 students organized in forty created groups, among the private and public Universities, planning strategies for community mobilization.

Various have been the “actions” I participated to, as medical visits to children in favelas, special courses on active citizenship in rural areas or planting new trees in the city.

Coordinating these activities I had a direct contact with local communitiies and a privileged focal point from which look at people lives and know that side of Brazilian culture which is not on travel agencies catalogues.

Like the story of three little friends, nightly shoes shiners in the main tourist street of Natal where everybody usually take just havaianas. Sleeping in a little corner, which they call their “sweet home”, they are already conscious that have to make big efforts to gain daily food.

The aim of the project I was responsible of, has been to spread the practice of social responsibility among students, stimulating their personal and academic development and making them realize that they have the tools to be actor of change at first line. I’m witness of some little but important examples which show as this could be real.

Last week I was speaking with one volunteer and he told to me: “The youth association we had helped to create in our community has organized a workshop on drugs prevention. After 5 months I received an invitation for an activity they have organized only by themselves. It was great!”

In an isolated rural area a 60yearsold men was crying because of the proud in receiving his first certificate for a course on human rights. He hadn’t any hope to still have the chance to study once in his life and to be recognized for it.

A pregnant woman, who wanted absolutely to abort, understood that it was important to give the chance to her child to live. Her decisions changed after attending a special course for pregnant women. How could she abort as the future mum, if a stranger could speak in that sweetly and careful way about her baby?

Nowadays I have a different perception of reality and the certainty that the change of things is possible.
It could seem strange to hear that from a person who decided to leave her country to give help to a foreign one, but it is true that only through a day to day keeping in touch with people and situations I could understand the magic emotion of real change.

It could be a little one, but it has been possible and this is its greatness.