|
An Activist Exchange for Youth, by Youth:
Mozambican Activists Visit IWHC's Partners in Brazil
 |
| Mozambican activists from Geração Biz in Recife, Brazil. |
In August 2005, ten young activists from Mozambique traveled to Brazil for a youth-led international exchange on advocacy for sexual and reproductive rights, sponsored by IWHC. The Mozambicans—five women and five men—are active with Geração Biz, a partnership among AMODEFA (the Mozambican Association for Family Development), UNFPA (the UN Population Fund), and the city government of Maputo, Mozambique's capital. Geração Biz—which means "Busy Generation" in Portuguese—seeks to inform and empower Mozambican youth by training them to become peer educators on sexuality, reproduction, and HIV/AIDS, and supporting their efforts to advocate for youth-friendly health services and other public services that address young people's health needs and human rights. IWHC has been part of the Maputo City project since 2002, when we were invited to help the participating
 |
| Participants discuss their expectations for the exchange during an early session. |
organizations identify and address barriers to girls' participation.
The Mozambicans were received by young representatives from five Brazilian organizations with considerable advocacy experience, many of them longtime colleagues of IWHC. These organizations—Grupo Curumim, Instituto Papai, Cunhã Feminist Collective, Grupo Transas do Corpo, and Reprolatina—are using diverse strategies to secure sexual and reproductive health and rights both locally and nationally. Based in Brazil's Northeast, where the majority of the exchange took place and where communities face high rates of poverty and limited access to healthcare and education, organizations like Curumim, Papai, and Cunhã are working to fill gaps in the public system in the short term and advocate for better public policies in the long term. They are providing young men and women with the information and skills they need to make healthy sexual and reproductive decisions, and empowering them to participate in advocacy for public policies that will address weaknesses in the health and education systems. Based in Goiânia in central Brazil, Transas is engaged in similar efforts to connect women and young people with the public health system and involve them in local organizing for social change. And in the southeastern state of São Paulo, Reprolatina's youth staff provides adolescents with vital information on sexuality, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS prevention, fostering a powerful sense of young people's capacity for positive contribution among local leadership.
 |
|
Participants visit a low-income favela in the city of Recife, where activists with Instituto Papai have trained a member of the community (right) to conduct public education on HIV/AIDS and establish condom distribution points.
|
Participants spent ten days sharing strategies and experiences, building skills, discussing common goals and challenges, and learning about creative methodologies to engage youth and decision-makers in processes of social change. Participatory trainings conducted by the Brazilians challenged the Mozambicans to look at their work in new ways and explore new strategies for accomplishing their goals. The workshops encouraged them to apply a feminist analysis to their projects and campaigns, explore innovative ways of working with men as well as women on gender issues, mount effective advocacy campaigns, develop media and communications strategies, and take on taboo topics in sexual and reproductive rights. Some sessions were conducted with the whole group together and others were women-only or men-only discussions, a format that enabled participants to share personal experiences and delve into difficult topics according to their comfort levels.
 |
| Brazilian participants try on traditional clothing from Mozambique. |
Mozambican participants were particularly struck by the Brazilian initiatives that targeted men as well as women, most notably Papai's efforts to promote responsible fatherhood among adolescent parents, and to create a safe space for young gay men to discuss gender and sexuality and form alliances with young straight men. The Mozambicans were also interested in Cunhã's "No One Gets Pregnant Alone" campaign (Ninguém Engravida Sozinho), which challenges young people to consider teen pregnancy in terms of both partners' rights, responsibilities, and behavior—rather than just girls'. This example was particularly useful for the Mozambicans, since they are currently developing an advocacy campaign to oppose a new policy in Maputo that seeks to remove pregnant adolescent girls from public schools.
The exchange was a great success—participants emerged energized, inspired, and eager to apply fresh perspectives to their work at home. Despite significant social, cultural, development, and other differences between Mozambique and Brazil, participants found that they faced many of the same challenges—scarcity of resources to support their efforts for progressive social change; lack of comprehensive, affordable, and respectful healthcare for people living in their communities; high rates of poverty and internal migration; and difficult-to-discuss power dynamics between men and women as a
|
Portrait of a Young Activist
Brenda Beatriz da Vera Campos, 20, Mozambique
|
|
"The exchange was of great value to me as an activist and as a person. Seeing the strength with which the Brazilian feminists go out into the streets and stand up for themselves gave me a lot of encouragement. I discovered that advocacy isn't something people can achieve today; it's an ongoing struggle. As an activist, I have to be prepared to stand up and fight for a just cause."
|
central challenge in improving reproductive health and addressing vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. They also shared many of the same deeply held beliefs—in young people's capacity for positive contribution, in the centrality of sexual and reproductive rights to socioeconomic development, and in a shared vision of social justice for their communities and their countries. Finally, coming from one of only five Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, the Mozambicans welcomed the opportunity to participate in an activist exchange in their native tongue, as language barriers often preclude their participation in cross-border African dialogues on sexual and reproductive health and rights. To this end, one outcome of the exchange will be the eventual establishment of a Portuguese-language advocacy network among participating organizations, activists, and allies, as a springboard for future collaborations. In the words of Rogério, an activist with Geração Biz, "When it comes to advocacy, it's us, young people, who have to step up and defend our rights. Because if we don't speak up for ourselves, who will?"
IWHC provided financial and technical support for the August 2005 Brazil/ Mozambique exchange. Photos by Melisa Dickie.
More information about our work in Mozambique>>
More information about our work in Brazil>>
|
