Empower residents of Rio's favelas through ICT

“Empower Residents of Rio's

Favelas Through ICT” aims to empower Favela communities in Rio de Janeiro through promotion
of their rights in order to promulgate social change in their communities.

The course “CDI Digital
Culture for Social Mobility” introduces basic notions of citizenship and
computer skills whilst highlighting new technology as well as social media.
CDI’s methodology focuses in capacity building in the following topics: operational
systems, text and vídeo edit, blogs, YouTube, Wikipédia, and Google Plus.

Furthermore, it works
towards professional qualification of individuals through emancipation. There are five steps, as listed below:

1. 1.     
   Understand
   the world: research and sharing of experiences;
2. 2.     
   Select
   an issue: in-depth look at their lives and communities to select an issue to
   tackle;
3. 3.     
   Plan
   an action: together, students plan an action to help address the issue;
4. 4.     
   Mobilize:
   students take action to address the problem;
5. 5.     
   Evaluation:
   the group looks back at path they have taken.

The “real life” approach
to the process motivates students as it appeals to different areas of their
lives. The course also explores problem solving skills, critical thinking, and
team work. Hence, participants practice to become informed active citizens. Their
communities now carry the potential to organize and express their concerns
through a structured model that offers an effective delivery to society at
large.

Diverse social
organizations partner up with CDI in order to construct and deliver these courses
in hubs dubbed CDIs Community Center, a reference point within Favela
Communities, to access this technology.

The CDI team developed a
series of activities and follow-up activities to these hubs to incorporate the
Communities’ children, teenagers, and the youth. Each course takes
approximately 50 hours, within a 2-4 month period, according to CDI Communities’
schedule.

Activities

CDI Rio de Janeiro is
responsible for the elaboration and monitoring of partnering institutions in
the project’s implementation. 

• Training for Social
  Educators and Social Project Coordinators.

In 2012 CDI offered three
courses to train social educators as well as social project coordinators. They discussed the following items acordingly:

1^st Course: Social Educators Training

Subject: Digital
Culture for Social Mobility – Modules I and II / Advanced workshops                

# Participants: 30

2^nd Course: Project Coordinators Training/ CDI Community

Subject: Workshop
and round table discussion. Topic: Alignment of CDI Community Center Network,
Methodology and innovation at CDI Community Center.   

# Participants: 20

3^rd  Course: Building CDI Community
Center Network

Subject: Themes:
Strengthening the implementation of CDI’s methodology with the public at CDI
Community Center.

# Participants: 30

Monitoring

CDI’s Political-Pedagogical
approach maintains the monitoring and evaluation plan in five steps as
mentioned earlier.

Moreover, Project
Managers systematically use technological tools to enhance communication and
monitoring of activities at CDI Communities. In this manner, feedback can be
quickly incorporated in the activity preventing the process from slowing down.  

• Implementation of courses
  at CDI Communities

Courses offered: Basic
and Advanced Office Package Course, Video Edit, Image Edit, Digital Media and computer
skills for children.

Nº of student graduated in 2012: 8.738