Ruma - Empowering Northwest Brazilian Youth

Platform with the objective of integrating and empowering young minorities activists with training and tools for the creation of sustainable solutions for the communities in Brazil’s northeast region.

Ruma is an initiative with the goal of fostering sustainable and inclusive communities through the activism of young minorities in Brazil’s northeast region. Using active learning methodologies and the Sustainable Development Goals, we induce the social awakening of young people to create effective positive change. Providing a simple and accessible virtual platform, we will centralize opportunities, training, and materials while mapping the existing socio-environmental impact in the region.

We have three main operations currently:

Awareness: free activities awakening the interest of youth for solving problems s in their communities with sustainability good practices and offering protagonist spaces.

Capacitation: affordable activities for young people interested in personalized capacitation focused on green jobs leadership skills, certifying young professionals in STEM areas.

Partnerships: We will offer a network for institutions interested in reaching, investing, and developing the youth audience in the Northeast region.

The central problem identified is the lack of support for sustainable youth leadership development from social minorities, especially in the northeastern region of Brazil. According to a statistical survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the Northeast concentrates 47.9% of poverty in Brazil. The background behind this problem is the socioeconomic inequalities that segregate and hinder exchange possibilities between the regions of Brazil, impacting the development and sustainability indicators of the region.

Thus, there is less access to education for young people in the Northeast (according to the Atlas of Youth, it corresponds to 26% of the country's youth), especially people belonging to one or more minority groups, such as women, black people, and the LGBT+ community from the lower classes. Furthermore, the lack of educational infrastructure for developing personal and professional skills in the technology and science sector diminishes the potential to foster sustainable and inclusive communities. When we fail to invest in the Northeast, we are failing to develop our country.

According to data from the Atlas of Youth, 24% of young Brazilians indicate that environment and sustainable development is a relevant topic to be discussed by society, on the same level as topics related to education and professional future (25%) and racism (25%). This highlights how interested our youth is in fundamental issues for our society, through this, Ruma aims to build more discussion and innovation spaces for the northeastern youth that haven’t enjoyed opportunities or had no support.

Brazil has a division into 5 geographical regions, which defines many decisions in the country: North, Northeast, Center-west, Southeast, and South. Despite the recognition of the greatness of Brazil's natural resources, the Northeast is historically affected by geographical and social challenges in the conservation of natural resources. 

The country is among the ten most unequal in the World Bank's ranking, impacting the region that holds almost 50% of the country's poverty according to the Brazilian Statistics Institute. Despite this, national policies have proven inefficient in dealing with water crises and preserving resources, such as the 2020 oil spill in the ocean and the lack of water assistance for smallholders, with current consequences on the local economic improvement dependent on fishing, agriculture, and tourism.

Consequently, the previous generations migrated to the Southeast in search of a better life and end up in unskilled jobs and suffering xenophobia. Despite that, the Northeastern youth has a big educational potential, but the region also faces a loss of young intellectual talents, who leave their roots toward opportunities in the South.

The target audience of more than 11 million young northeastern people between 16 at 29 years, will be benefited from accessing decision-making places to co-create solutions to solve socio-environmental problems. Consequently, by improving the local market through the investment in a new green economy, activism, and educational access, the northeast region will create its own innovation ecosystem based on its culture and natural resources lead by the youth leader's generation.

The project started in 2021. In 2021, with United People Global support, the first model was created in the Sustainability Leadership program, being awarded by Força Meninas with Change the World Like a Girl Award providing access to MIT Solv[ED] and two micro-grants. In the first exploratory grant, invested strengthening relations with Fortaleza’s projects, doing interviews with leaders, and volunteering in environmental activities. Moreover, interviewing 113 of 298 participants of Ruma’s activities with ten institutions.

Despite the focus on northeastern territory, the public from the Southeast (higher DHI in Brazil) in national activities exceeded the public from the northeast, leading to leadership and professional access. Furthermore, 45.54% of the participants are white people, demonstrating the consequences of the country's inequalities.

Nevertheless, 63.39% were women and 41.96% were in public education entirely, showing these minority groups' potential to reach new ones.

Based on this data, Ruma is ingressed in Digital Future Labs, a futurism hub for slams created by the UK Brazil Tech Hub from British Government to use technology and sustainability in territory development.

Ruma is in the prototype stage because we are structuring our activities, defining the business model, and creating strategies for future expansion. Besides the recent online platform construction through Sol[ED] prototype micro-grant, the team was only worked on Awareness operation with the goal collect information and understanding the target audience.

Moreover, the next steps include actions to continue understanding the northeastern youth and collecting feedback about the platform's first phase including:

• A mobilizer program, to implement the platform in each state of the northeast region;
• A regional forum with young leaders from the entire region (and from different segments of our society) to collect information about youth's main interests;
• Fundraising to financial sustainability;

These are very significant steps that have been in our action plan, and now we only have resources to focus on these activities.

This prototyping process is extremely intense because we value the planning, structuring, and execution of every detail that will make a difference in our solution. Therefore, many meetings, spreadsheets to gather specific data, and formalized documents are held so we can finish the prototype and, once this stage is accomplished, we can move on to the pilot phase.

The platform is still to be developed and the technology will be based on Progressive Web Apps, which can be loaded even without an Internet connection, thinking of users in regions with limited access or outdated equipment.

The young people have the possibility to use the site on the computer or save the process in platafform and add a shortcut on the phone's home screen to access after. As an example: a girl only has internet access in her parent’s home, but her grandparents need to take care of her while her parents are working, and there is no Internet connection, and cannot afford mobile data. She can use the offline platform to read the materials for the course she is participating in Ruma platform.

In addition, PWA avoids losing 20% of potential users during the download process and competition with popular applications in which users spend 77% of their time, this means that it is extremely difficult to get users to even use your app.

The technology also is SEO-friendly, allowing search engines to find them, benefiting the passive search of users through the content created, and can generate income through ads

In 2021, Ruma has impacted 584 young Brazilians. We realized activities in all regions of the country, take the opportunity with young institutions that represent how interested the younger generation is in building bridges between regions. According to our data survey: 

• 65,1% of participants from the Northeast region;
• 18.2% of the participants from the Southeast region;
• 4.5% of the participants from the South region;
• 4.5% of the participants from the Midwest region.
• 0,4% of participants from the North region;
• 7,3 of participants have not indemnified region;

Moreover, we followed up on 8 applications from low-income youth of Northeast and North regions to the United People Global program that supported Ruma's creation.

Our goal is to expand the number of low-income young people in the Northeast impacted by our initiative and future, from the North, so that they have access to the initiatives we are structuring for 2022, such as the mobilizer program, idealized from the participation of UNFPA's Juventudes Ya! Camp; and the Regional Forum for Young Leaders from the Northeast of Brazil, in partnership with the Fortaleza city government and local centers of youth, Cuca Institute. During this future activities will be discussed topics such as mental wellbeing social minorities, activism, social impact careers, and sustainable cities.

For the year 2022 we aim to empower more young people and build bridges capable of leading them to the achievements they desire through sustainability and innovation, we want to impact 100% more young people than we do in 2022, between the ages of 16 and 29. Our goal is that our audience to be impacted will be composed of 70% people of color, and that 90% of the general public will be low-income and 30% young people from the state of Ceará. Another fundamental goal for our planning is to make about 10 partnerships with institutions and companies. After the launching of the platform we aim to reach 3,000 accesses: there will be many materials, opportunities, and training. A very important goal for Ruma in the year 2022 is to reach 2 young mobilizers of our initiative in each state, that is, 18 mobilizers. Besides all this, we want to impact 100 people directly and 1000 people indirectly through awareness-raising. In 2022 we want to expand our team to another 10 members, we want to expand our work and we need committed people to do this.

1. 100% growth compared to 2021 - 1000 young people sensitized

70% people of color

90% low income people

30% young people from the state of Ceará

2. 100% of the states in the region being impacted - 9 states reached

3. Train 18 mobilizers in communication skills and activism - 2 mobilizers per state

100% youth from minority groups

100% low-income youth

100% youth from public education

4. 3000 accesses on the Ruma platform

80% by the mobilizers' actions

20% by search engines

5. train 50 young people in sustainability skills

20% from traditional communities

30% from rural areas

50% from slum areas

6. Develop 10 partnerships for institutional strengthening.

1° Financial. Our team is composed of 3 young low-income northeasterners and Brazilians. Consequently, to continue our work, we need to make the initiative sustainable financially, invest quality time and energy, ensuring our basic needs. In the last few months, we have invested in grants and scholarships opportunities, possibly affording the necessary expenses and equipment.

2° Social vulnerability. All the team is located in regions of social vulnerability, locations that do not have as much access to incubation programs with financial support, which hinders the process of innovation and development of our project, lacking support and visibility.

3° The country we live in is facing the consequences of negligence and lack of federal government support to climate crisis solutions, affecting the environmental initiative's implementation.

4° We need advice on legal issues to get more funding and formalize our project

5° We need more specialized people in certain areas like technology (a developer) to help us create our platform.

Ruma's team is composed of young people from the northeast region from one or more social minorities. Experiencing the loss of our dreams, we decided to come together so that other youth in our region wouldn't stop leading for lack of support, funding, or training. Furthermore, witnessing the destruction of the natural resources of our region made us seek collective and local intervention to preserve our territory.

Founder Sabrina Cabral has been part of several initiatives of the Fortaleza government, learning in practice the importance of investing in youth from vulnerable areas.

As a result of environmental with humanistic education, she discovered the relationship between social inequalities and lack of innovation to solve the current crises, especially in STEM degrees. Consequently, she perceived an interdisciplinary degree as the key to overcoming these barriers, but it is not a reality in Brazilian academia, diminishing the development of problem-solving youth leadership, mainly from vulnerable groups.

Mainly through the activities of the MIT Solv[ED], it was possible to model the solution by thinking about these experiences and the data and experiences of the last two years.

Força Meninas - Institutional support, acceleration of social projects, and access to the Solv[ED] community and other practitioners.

United People Global - Institutional support, access to training in sustainability and leadership skills, safe space for the development of Northeastern leaderships at the international level.

Municipal Government of Fortaleza - Financial support, access to skill development opportunities, institutional support for carrying out activities, social support.

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The project solves a problem not only by observing national demands of social impact, but also intersectional demands about the particular problems of Brazil's regions.

Combining technology with educational and sustainable vision, the project has great potential not only to solve the issues of the Northeast of Brazil, but also to become a scalable model for solving social disadvantages in different countries.

Furthermore, the project has already been recognized by renowned institutions locally, nationally, and internationally, and has great potential to generate connections to impact the lives of thousands of young people.

From the research and work done over the last few months, we saw the potential to reach out to girls and young women in our region, thinking about serving this public as a potential for developing leadership for change.

Finally, the project strongly wishes to have resources for a more capable team and for investing in the voices of the most vulnerable youth.