RAPID Projects - CSO Case Studies

From educational intensive care towards an educational city - the case of Araçuaí (Minas Gerais State, Brazil)
Monica Barroso

Introduction to the case
Through an innovative popular education project, the Popular Centre for Culture and Development (CPCD) - a Brazilian non-governmental organisation based in one of the country's poorest areas, the Jequitinhonha valley, has offered the municipality of Araçuaí, in the south-eastern State of Minas Gerais, the possibility of an educational revolution, in an attempt to combat the alarming statistics of the local educational standard. The 'Araçuaí: From educational intensive care towards an educational city' project was designed by an unconventional collaboration arrangement between the NGO, the local Secretary of Education and the Municipal Council of Children's Rights, where CPCD is responsible for designing and implementing local educational policies.

The type and extent of policy change
For the first time in Brazil, a local government appointed a non-governmental organisation to run its Department of Education, which entails the full design and implementation of local educational policies. Since August 2003 CPCD has been responsible for Araçuaí's Secretary of Education - even though there is not legislation that allows a governmental body to be run by an organisation.

Some thoughts on the explanation of the policy change
The political context
The good working relations between the NGO and the local government, added to the dramatic situation of the municipal educational system, and evidence that the NGO was performing much better than the local schools, led the mayor of Araçuaí, who had particularly good professional and personal relations with the organisation, to invite CPCD to implement educational policy in the municipality. The decision was made by the mayor herself, with support from the Secretary of Education. It is important to remember that the local administration, affiliated to the Workers Party (PT), was very popular by nature, having implemented 'participatory budgeting' locally, and being open to incorporate civil society initiatives into governmental action. This is to say that the political environment was particularly favourable in Araçuaí for such a policy change.

The ways CPCD tried to affect policy change
CPCD's historical path of successful results represents a key driving force for the policy change under analysis. CPCD has been developing and implementing non-formal (i.e. outside the governmental sphere) educational projects that combine popular education and community development since 1984. Hence local governments have been ready to replicate their methodology in a number of Brazilian regions. The NGO's first project (Sementinha or 'little seed' project), aimed at 4-6 year olds, had already been employed by several municipal nurseries in Araçuaí, based on the evidence that the children who had taken part of the project were clearly better students when they entered formal education than other children who hadn't had access to the project.

The nature of research-based evidence
Evidence showed that local public primary education achieved very poor excellence rates according to research-based evaluation, widening the gap between the NGOs and the public service even more. According to the researchers involved in the gathering of the baseline data, Araçuaí's educational system had proved to be disastrous. Out of the 1,684 students enrolled in 2002, 97% of the students of the 8th grade reached insufficient or critical performance rates, and 20% of the local population above 10 years of age were found to be illiterate.

A second source of research-based evidence that led to the policy change was CPCD's successful design and implementation of community-based educational technologies. These comparative results led the local government to involve CPCD in the process of subjecting the local educational system to an 'intensive care' process, protecting their children and adolescents from an early 'civic death'.

The mechanisms they used to get the evidence into the policy process
The main approach employed by CPCD was to highlight the local assets; rather than the region's social and economic difficulties. The project was divided into two main stages. The 'intensive care' stage involved mobilising all rural communities to look after their children and adolescents in need of improved levels of 'care'. This was done by transforming sources of local knowledge (stories, recipes, toys, practices, beliefs) into pedagogical resources. Then, the 'educational city' phase aimed at transforming each rural community of Araçuaí into a 'learning community', where local knowledge, abilities and attitudes are made available to every child, young person or adult of this micro-universe.

Conclusions and lessons learned
The Araçuaí case tells a great deal about opportunities and challenges that civil society - government collaborations entail.

Policy changes that incorporate small-scale successful experiences of civil society organisations depend not only on good results, but also on a favourable political context and good working relations with the policy-making sphere (it was aided by the Workers Party municipal elections victory in 2004; but has not been taken up elsewhere where the local governments have not recognised their failures);
Trust in local civil society organisations by policy makers can enhance their potential and promote social change more widely, enabling NGOs to reach the policy arena (CPCD's projects had already been tested successfully in municipal schools and nurseries for at least five years);
Research-based evidence can highlight local challenges and opportunities, and provide empirical arguments to support the decision-making process for constructive change.

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