In this context of globalization, there is growing interest in global citizenship education (GCED), signaling a shift in the role and purpose of education to that of forging more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies. The United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), launched in 2012, has been instrumental in raising awareness of the importance of global citizenship to building a better future for all. UNESCO, in response to the increasing demand from its Member States for support in empowering learners to become responsible global citizens, has made GCED one of its key education objectives for the next eight years (2014-2021).
Environment and human development: two big worries for mankind in a world that stills fight against misery and that each year increases environmental crisis. The irrational way that most of industries extracts raw materials and has produced goods, just like the unaware pattern of population’s consumption around the world is something noticeable. The matter of waste disposal from industries and from the population is a very important theme discussed on regional, national and at international institutions like United Nations.
In Brazil, in recent years, we have many examples of public policies for management of solid waste. An example of public policy that combines the worries related to environment and poverty eradication is the support of recycling cooperativesthrough programs and edicts that finances the cooperated. To help those cooperatives to access the government programs some NGOs and academic institutions, like Universidade do Estado da Bahia, aid those cooperatives to build the edicts proposals giving technical and law training.
Education for Life`s role, with the collaboration of Ana Verena Menezes, is to assist the cooperated to be more competitive and to face socioeconomic difficulties that may happen. An example of that was the creation of a statute for a net of cooperatives giving strength to those groups to fight for their rights and compete for public notices. A parallel action was a big effort to organize the hangars that receives the materials on each one of the 9 cooperatives. During that support the cooperated could do a participative production layout which they designed how they imagine the disposition of their working place. Besides, they made the materials signposts, participated on activities to design products to benefit the raw materials collected, like plastic bottles for example. Another important role was the orientation about the best ways to preserve the working material, work safety, just like group dynamics to make interpersonal relations better between the cooperatives.
Here in Brazil the collection work is extremely devalued, not just because the prices offered for the materials are very low but because of the stigmatization of very poor people involved with garbage – the things that are neglected, thrown away. At Salvador, just like in most of the country, there is a minimum importance given to garbage, the majority of homes doesn`t recycle their materials and the city is the spot of the biggest popular party in the world, the Carnival. On 2010, Federal Government started a program of solid waste management through 12.305/10 act that stipulates 20% reduction goal on waste until 2015.
Would that public policies give place to a global governance that will eradicate poverty if they are applied on international law?
At the meeting, Luiz Godinho, Public Information Officer at UNHCR Brazil, noted that there are about 4,600 refugees recognized by the Brazilian government (2012), from more than 70 different nationalities, where women constitute 30% of that population.
Javier Collado with Luiz Fernando Godinho, Public Information Officer at UNHCR Brazil
UNHCR’s work in Brazil is scheduled for the same principles and functions in other countries, protecting refugees and promoting durable solutions for the problems. In addition, the United Nations agency acting in cooperation with the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), linked to the Ministry of Justice. Thus, every refugee has Brazilian government protection and can, therefore, obtain documents, work, study and exercise the same rights as any foreign legal in Brazil (Law 9474/97).
Brazil is internationally recognized as a welcoming country, because he always had a pioneering role and leadership in international refugee protection. It was the first Southern Cone country to ratify the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, in the year of 1960. In addition, Brazil is also one of the first countries of the UNHCR Executive Committee, responsible for the approval of programs and agency annual ornaments.
Last day september 10th 2012, Education for Life NGO President, Javier Collado, had the opportunity to meet and dialogues with Ms. Leymah Gbowee during her conference at “Frontiers of Thought” celebrated in Salvador of Bahia, Brazil.
Javier Collado with Ms. Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Award
Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee was responsible for organizing the movement that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. His recovery work with children who were child soldiers during the war, promoted by Charles Taylor, made known worldwide. Mother of six children, Gbowee says that social changes must be performed by mothers. Today, she is director of Women Peace and Security Network – Africa-WIPSEN.
In 2011, Gbowee was one of three personalities winning the Nobel Peace Prize along with his compatriot Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman to lead Liberia and Yemeni Tawakel Karman, their struggle on behalf of women’s rights. Author of Warriors of Peace, edited by the Company of the letters in 2012, is also the main character of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which portrays his life and fight against the militias in Africa.
On International Women’s Day, Javier Collado interviewed the Nobel Peace Prize in the journal Global Education Magazine.
On the one hand, from the NGO Education for Life, we can discern that cognitive analysis involves all those areas of knowledge that utilize human cognition as transversal and emergent element in their explanations of the structure of reality, where we want to have understanding of the human being and its relationship with the world, their circumstances, and the moment of the emergence of consciousness of consciousness and unconsciousness at the global level, as well as the emergence of knowledge and lack of knowledge developed by technoscience that updated the current state of the knowledge and information society.
On the other hand, from the Multi-Institutional and Multidisciplinary Doctorate in Dissemination of Knowledge (DMMDC) , located in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), we work the triple theoretical,epistemological and methodological area which study the knowledge from their construction, translation and distribution processes, aiming at the understanding of languages, frameworks and processes specific to different disciplines with the aim of making these specific bases for the construction of the ballast of understanding inter/transdisciplinary and multi-referentiality, with the commitment of production and socialization of knowledge in open perspective to dialogue between these different disciplines/sciences, and other modes of knowledge organization, in order to make private knowledge of cognitive or epistemic communities in public.
Therefore, the conference addresses to the cognitive analysis, which has to be done with a polilogic look, where the human being is seen as the same biological specie and the same destiny, as the future history of our biosphere will depend on the historical future of knowledge that we develop and the way we choose to apply it. Thus, we need to formulate and organize knowledge through a complex, creative, transversal, polysemic and transpolitical epistemology, which promotes trans-cultural human effort to be aware of the ethics of the sustainable world. Finally, we also want to present our digital magazine of creation and dissemination of knowledge: GLOBAL EDUCATION MAGAZINE, a project supported by UNESCO and UNHCR.
Há hoje na Bahia um movimento que infelizmente insiste em crescer, o Movimento dos Sem Teto (MSTB). Milhares de desabrigados vivem em conjunto em assentamentos precários por questões sócio-econômicas, sem ter direito ao que a constituição rege com base para qualquer indivíduo brasileiro: educação, saúde e moradia. Esse movimento surgiu num contexto de luta pela reintegração de posse de uma área que após ser ocupada por 700 famílias que não tinham como e para onde ir, deveriam ser expulsas do local. A realidade fática demandou o surgimento de uma organização para uma melhor defesa contra as reações adversas.
O MSTB se baseia em quatro princípios norteadores: A horizontalidade, a autonomia, a solidariedade e o poder popular, segundo consta no documento da Cartilha do II Congresso Estadual do MSTB. A autonomia em relação aos partidos políticos e aos governos; a horizontalidade nas relações de poder entre a base e a coordenação, sendo que a força da organização deve estar nos espaços coletivos de discussão; a solidariedade aos outros movimentos que lutam contra todas as formas de opressão e exploração.
O equipe psico-sócio-pedagógico Educar para Vivir trabalha em apoio à luta do MSTB pela moradia digna: com saúde, educação, segurança, cultura, lazer, meio ambiente equilibrado. Porém não se restringindo a isso, afirmando ter como objetivo maior a construção das comunidades do bem-viver. Estas, que ainda são um conceito indeterminado, podem ser delineadas como a busca por uma sociedade baseada nos valores da comunidade, solidariedade e do poder popular.
No MSTB, a existência de brancos pobres e de descendentes de homens e mulheres “batizados” a ferro e fogo como “indigenas” se entrelaça com cores, traços e gestos de uma fortíssima presença de negras e negros, formando um conjunto simbólico que desde o período colonial tentou realizar sonhos de justiça e igualdade social.
Dentro desse movimento há pessoas e organizações que atuam no sentido de (re)inseri-los na sociedade, seja através de capacitações para trabalho, capacitações políticas ou de intervenções com crianças. Uma dessas intervenções é feita pela nossa colega de Educar para Vivir, a terapeuta ocupacional e mestre em psicologia Adriana Balaguer:
“A idéia surgiu a partir da minha pesquisa de mestrado, realizadas na UFBA, em Psicologia do Desenvolvimento. Há uma demanda, nessa área do saber, de conhecer diferentes contextos onde a criança se desenvolve. Como o MSTB é um nicho de desenvolvimento novo, surgido nos últimos 10 anos e ainda não havia sido pesquisado, enquanto contexto de desenvolvimento específico na Bahia, achamos que esse seria o início de um novo campo de pesquisas. Foram pesquisadas duas ocupações, por um ano: a Ocupação Cidade de Plástico e a Ocupação Quilombo Paraíso.”
O MSTB vem modificando o cotidiano de muitas pessoas da cidade do Salvador, seja pelas ocupações, seja pelas caminhadas e paralisações de ruas e avenidas, mostrando que podemos sim reverter a posição pacífica da sociedade em relação aos menos favorecidos. Por isso, trabalhos que defendem o ponto de vista de inserção dessa parcela na população na sociedade, seja no entendimento de como ela funciona ou não, devem ser expostas, entendidos e debatidos por todos.
Adriana Balaguer com as crianças do MSTB
“As crianças deste contexto vivem em um ambiente comunitário, muitas vezes compartilhando espaços de moradia, experimentando situações de instabilidade e precariedade habitacional e monetária em uma realidade sócio-econômica desfavorecida. Apesar disso, elas se desenvolvem e tem uma rotina de estudos brincadeira e cuidados gerais que podem favorecer seu desenvolvimento e, em alguns casos, garantir seu suporte emocional. Portanto, vale ressaltar que apesar da pobreza material poder ser um fator de risco, a mesma não é determinante para um resultado de desenvolvimento negativo.”
