O deb re cht 's social p rojects create development oppo rtunities for ...

Moisés da Silva (center, kneeling), shown here with his family, went from field hand to entre p reneur: developing family
f a rming is one focus of the Odebrecht Foundation’s work
Working with teens to change their world
During the presidential campaign,
then-candidate Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva used to say, “Give
someone a fish and you feed him
for a day; teach someone to fish
and you feed him for a lifetime.”
The Executive Director of the Odeb
recht Foundation, Maurício
M e d e i ros, believes that that idea
should be taken one step furt h e r.
“ We are already at the stage of
teaching people how to raise fish
instead of catching them,” says
M e d e i ros. He is not just speaking
m e t a p h o r i c a l . l yOne of the
Alliance with Adolescents’ main
p rograms is developing Family
A q u a c u l t u re.
In a broader sense, “raising
fish” also means giving youths the
e n t re p reneurial outlook they need
to develop their home regions and
stay there. Medeiros, who took the
helm of the Odebrecht Foundation
in October 2002, and has been an
O d e b recht Group member since
1980, intends to “Continue the
work already being done in the
social area and contribute a somewhat
more entre p reneurial outlook.”
“This is the challenge we are
going to meet,” he says. “In the
social area, the world ‘profit’ usually
gets a negative reaction. Howe
v e r, we can talk about surplus. In
other words, NGOs and OSCIPS
(Civil Society Organizations of
Public Interest) can not only be
s e l f - s u p p o ting r but have enough
left over to invest.” According to
M e d e i ros, the Foundation’s role is
not to create and maintain such
o rganizations but to encourage
them to emerg e .
The focus on adolescent pro t a g-
onists will continue. “Our model is
to work with the shepherd s
instead of the sheep. The sheph
e rds have the natural ability and
knowledge re q u i red to addre s s
their re g i o n ’s problems,” arg u e s
M e d e i ros. In addition to the
Alliance with Adolescents pro j e c t ,
the Foundation began implementing
three new initiatives in the
S o u t h e rn Lowlands of Bahia last
year: Youth House, a part n e r s h i p
with the State Department of Education,
a school that uses teaching
methods adapted to rural re a l i t i e s ;
the Civil Rights Counter, in partnership
with the Justice Ministry,
which supplies essential documents
such as ID cards and birt h
c e rtificates; and the Land Conservation
Organization (OCT) which
does environmental work.
C reated in 1965, the Odebre c h t
Foundation has focused its work
on adolescents since 1988. In
1998, teens and young adults in
the nort h e a s t e rn part of Brazil
became the primary focus, and
since 2000, the Foundation has
been concentrating all of its
re s o u rces on the Alliance with
Adolescents project in part n e r s h i p
with the Ay rton Senna Institute,
the WK Kellogg Foundation, and
the BNDES development bank. In
2002 alone, the Odebrecht Foundation
contributed BRL 2.5 million to
the total of BRL 7.3 million invested
in the three micro - re g i o n s
included in the pro j e c t .
The Alliance Institute was off i-
cially created in January 2002, and
qualified as an OSCIP in October,
when it began operating independently
from the Foundation. The
Institute now coordinates the activities
of the Alliance with Adolescents.
18 Odebrecht Informa august • 2003