Brazil: Preparing children with the education and skills for participation

Challenge

In the past Brazil has struggled with childhood violence, teenage pregnancy, and high social inequality levels. 26 per cent of children live in poverty and the leading cause of death for children aged 10-19 is homicide in major cities. Teenage pregnancy and obesity remain leading problems and in 2014, 3 million children were not in school.

Solution

Brazil is a longstanding pioneer in child-friendly governance in South America through its Platforms for Urban Centers (PCU) initiative, a programme initiated by UNICEF and partners. The Platform was launched in 2008 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and has since grown to include 10 cities including Salvador, Fortaleza, and Manaus. In its policy on child-friendly governance, the government has identified four social goals: reducing adolescent homicide; preventing school exclusion; advancing early childhood development; and protecting adolescent sexual and reproductive rights.

The project includes multiple social programs for children twinned with child consultation and youth participation. A key part of the initiative is its promotion of adolescent engagement and networking, allowing young people to be engaged in the political system around them and creating politically and socially aware young adults. It is hoped that this will create networks of child participation around Brazil which will be able to be involved in local and national government. The project features Inter-Sectoral Thematic Dialogues (ITD), where groups of stakeholders and children meet to discuss each of the four project aims. At the ITDs, government officials, specialists, community representatives, and children meet to establish creative solutions to the four problems youth in Brazil are faced with.

The PCU is a joint initiative undertaken by UNICEF and its partners to aim for increased social mobility and decreased social inequality in Brazil’s most unequal and vulnerable cities. The participation of adolescents is one of the key pillars of the project. The PCU uses debates, discussion groups, and forums to allow and encourage children to speak about the social equality issues which they believe are important. This exemplifies the importance of equipping children with the necessary tools to be able to participate and to use their voices to impact decisions.

Impact 

Numerous results were observed in Brazil in the observation period 2013-2016. In Fortaleza, the homicide rate among children aged 10-19 decreased from 136 per 100,000 to 98.2 per 100,000. Similar results were seen in Manaus, where the rate of death due to external causes for the same age group decreased from 69.9 per 100,000 to 22.4 per 100,000. Positive effects were also seen in teen pregnancy rates, which in São Luis decreased from 18.1 per 100 to 17.2 per 100. These results show the cross-thematic effect that children’s education and engagement can have on such pressing social issues.