Powering a new future

I asked Ana Vale, the event coordinator and Head of EQUAL Managing Authority, Portugal how she feels now that everything’s finished.

She looked as happy and tired as she said she was. “I’m very happy. It went well. I’m relieved it’s over. it was very intense, full of stress, very gratifying. The atmosphere between people was very interesting; it was creative and there was a lot of happiness… it’s something not to forget.

“And now I’m going to rest.”

I caught Peter Ramsden, a Commission Expert, as he was leaving and the building was being closed down. He talked about what he took away from this event.

He said that he comes away feeling that although EQUAL has finished, at the same time some of its ideas are living on. The idea of social innovation has taken root. We desperately need to make some of our services work for people

Another feeling he has is that we have to do it ourselves. The next step is to see how people who were passionate in EQUAL can do it systematically, at scale, again and again and again.

I caught two happy-looking people at the end of the conference and got some short reactions from them about the event. They had been presenting the results of years of working together in an EQUAL funded project called Anim@Te.

I asked Graça what she thought of the conference. She was very enthusiastic about the reaction of people to their project. People had applauded their work and there was a great connection of ideas.

Graça then asked Paulo what he was taking away with him.

“It was an important meeting of ideas, sharing of information and a sense of hope that some of these ideas will continue, and an idea that people will incorporate some of these ideas in their work.”

Também ficou admirado com as tradutoras de linguagem gestual no auditório grande? Perguntei-lhes porque estão aqui e se há diferença entre Língua Gestual Portuguesa e outras línguas.

Anyone who has been in the large auditorium must have seen them: the interpretors of sign language. They had to sit on a well lit high chair, and their upper body was projected on the screen. Like the simultaneous translation for Portuguese, English and French, they were translating instantly. I asked Vera and Sara if there were any deaf people in the public, and to my surprise, they did not know. “Because of the screen, a deaf person doesn’t necessarily have to make contact with us.” In the video, i asked a couple more questions, in Portuguese. I first spoke to Vera, while Sara gestuated the translation, and then the other way around. This way, i figured, any deaf person can follow. But i now learned that sign language also comes in language variants.

Maria Emília Arroz faz parte do Gabinete da Equal Portugal. Perguntei-lhe o que achou do evento. Ao que ela respondeu: foi um evento para celebrar os nossos sucessos dos últimos 8 anos. O evento também era para abrir espaços para conversa. Os próximos passos? Um desafio grande vai ser como segurar “a inovação social” nas futuras actividades.

David Marshall spoke to Richard Tyrie, both of whom are co-founders of Jobsgopublic. Richard, a social entrepreneur himself, was talking in the session about mainstreaming and scaling up social innovation.

David started by asking what he thought of the event…

“It was good to see people with so much passion, people who are genuinely motivated to see the labour market working more effectively.”

What struck you most by what you’ve seen and heard ?

“There were a lot of parallels between the different projects. One of key themes to emerge is the need for innovative solutions, to be creative from the bottom up rather than top-down. It’s an iterative design process. There is no plan, it’s something that has to be co-created. There’s been a fair bit around risk and how to change the attitude to risk and see that failure is a helathy thing…

“What’s been notably absent is the matter of knowledge around talent and the need to understand what talent is required to identify the need for innovation, to create innovation, to deliver innovation and to sustain it over a long term. There seems to be a bit of a blind spot for working in collaborations with various other organisations. Unless someone is responsibile for making sure that that partnership has the right talents, then they are at a disadvantage before they start. There might be several organisations contributing complementary  skills.”

Washington told me about Afroreggae in Brasil. I asked him what he was doing here…

“I’m here in the name of the cultural gorup Afroreggae. Afroreggae is a group of social inclusion of art for culture. It started fifteen years ago after one of the biggest police killings. The police were taking revenge on the comunity of a narcotics groups, killing innocent people in the process. We’ve got 14 cultural groups, doing workshops of dance, percussion, circus, working in 4 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. They are areas completely run-down through violence and from being abandoned.”

What do you do in Afroreggae?

“I’m mediator of conflicts in Afroregae. Afroreggae specialises in mediating conflicts, operating in areas of drug traffiking. We live in a daily war between narcotics dealers and between them and the police. We work in this area so that the social spaces and work can continue.”

How did you enter the group of Afroreggae?

“I was in the narcotics trade. I started at the age of thirteen and at nineteen became the head of one of the factions that dominates in Rio de Janeiro. I was put in prison and when I left had no future, almost returning to trafikkking in narcotics. I was introduced to someone in Afroreggae by a vicar who we both knew.  He invited me to work with them. At the begining I didn’t think I could. As far as I knew they were about percussion music. But he spent the whole afternoon explaining the concept of Afroreggae, this thing of mediation of taking young people away from narcotics, of giving them opportunities through culture. And me, with my life experience could be a strong weapon for taking young people away from trafikking or stopping them from entering that world.  My management of narcotics was, unfortunately, part of my youth. He said that using this experience for good would be a strong weapon for Afroreggae to take children away from trafiiking. Having understood that I actually have a higher education in something I wanted to enter and work, where I’ve been for two years. Just this month we’ve been involved in a project of employability and got 30 young people working in private companies, sensitising them to the work of Afroreggae and who are partners in this project.”

Afroreggae transformed your life?

“Yes, they projected my life and the lives of other people like me who didn’t have any opportunity.”

Ana Paula was also asked to describe her experience of participating in a programme of entrepreneurship organised by the Portuguese Youth Institute.

She says it was a challenge. “As you all know the money system is the hardest thing in prison. If you don’t have family or a way of having money inside, it’s very hard. It’s the coffee, tobacco, hygeine products. All the other people doing this programme (with the Portuguese Youth Institute, IPJ) had money, but we (from prison) didn’t. One member of our group was in the “open regime” but the rest of us were in the “closed regime”. We didn’t have any sense of prices outside the prison, nor what we were going to do. We formed groups .. we were left in the middle of nowhere and told that we had to double our money. We brought some beads for ten euros. We had no notion of prices outside but we managed to double our money. But above all we learned about sharing knowledge. We were confronted with the world of men. We were from a mixed prison where the men felt superior and we, as women, had to show that we could do the same as them. The sharing of knowledge and our experience was very enriching.”

Ana Paula, a prisoner from Castelo Branco was asked to talk about her experience of a programme called “a day in prison” for young people to spend a day living with a prisoner to see what it was like.

“I was happy to be showing people the age of my son the prison system, the rules we have to follow, to share the space in my cell and the discipline we have to undergo when we don’t behave so well. They ate with us, came to school with us, and everything. At the end of the day we all came together to talk about the experience. They didn’t say much, but there was a shine and a tear in their eyes. They said they hadn’t imagined that we live like that and didn’t think they would be able to. I too, never thought I’d be able to live like that, but adapted.

Paula Vicente talks about people’s dissatisfaction with the lack of information in prison services. They started “Espaço I” (iSpace) where anyone could go for information about what is happening in their prison. going online has been crucial for sharing information between prisons. They started fifteen communities of practice with people working in prisons meeting up face-to-face every fortnight.