|
 Close to 19 million adult Brazilians have become tired
of waiting for government help and have resolved to work
themselves for the needy population.
Brazilians that give donations without the help of assistance
entities, is close to 80 percent of the population.
It is the poor that are most willing to help.
By Kim Richardson
There are 20 million volunteers working throughout Brazil, motivated by religious,
moral, or personal reasons, and imbibed with the spirit of generosity, citizenship,
participation, and reciprocity. These volunteers are housewives, liberal professionals,
students, businessmen, gardeners, merchants, etc. In short, they are common folks who have
realized that volunteer work is an instrument, which can be used to relieve suffering and
make this world a better place.
Leilah Landim, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, or UFRJ, did an
anthropological study which demonstrated that 22.6 percent of Brazilians over 18 years old
reserved part of their time to help other people that were not in their immediate family.
But it is not only the volume of people involved that calls attention. The outline of the
volunteer work in the country is changing. There are more youth engaged in mutual aid
actions. Businessmen/entrepreneurs are beginning to stimulate their workers to apply their
professional abilities in activities of the third sector. At the same time, the
preoccupation with the results is increasing. The modern volunteer seeks to go beyond
merely giving to a charity. He/She seeks to turn the work more efficient and even more
professional.
"The volunteer work is very significant to Brazil, if it is compared to other
areas," comments the anthropologist. Of the 22 countries studied, 28 percent of the
population on average dedicates themselves to some type of activity. In France, the
average remains a little above that of Brazil, with an average of 23.4 percent. Both,
however, are much lower than that of the United States: 49 percent of North Americans are
volunteers.
"But, there exists a political culture in which the society precedes the
state," observes the researcher. This implies a feeling of more responsibility for
social and public welfare than that in Brazil. "During 500 years, the citizen paid
taxes and transferred to the State the responsibility to take care of public welfare and
social problems," says Viviane Senna, president of the Ayrton Senna Institute.
"Now a new type of conscience is arising, in that civil society, businesses and State
all feel co-responsible." Indeed, the way to establish partnerships between the
government (federal, municipal, and state) and the civil society depends a lot on who is
in power. In some cases, it passes to the hands of non-governmental agencies (ONGs) to do
what the government cannot.
The study reached 19,748,390 people (over 18 yrs old) and who lived in cities with over
10,000 inhabitants, that dedicated themselves to some form of volunteer work, in absolute
numbers. Half of the Brazilian population gives money (21 percent) or material goods (29
percent). Summing up, Brazilians that give donations without the help of assistance
entities, is close to 80 percent of the population.
Adult Volunteers
Close to 19 million adult Brazilians have become tired of waiting for government help
and decided to work themselves for the needy population. Volunteers of the Hospital do
Câncer take courses periodically to better their work, which will help the physicians by
giving emotional support to the patients. Edlaine Demucio, 26 years old, who dedicates all
of her time to the coordination of the Casa dos Meninos, in the outskirts of São Paulo,
states, "I do this because I want to change things." And the pediatrician
Jocélio Coelho, 50 years old, has almost half of his life dedicated to volunteerism. It
has been 21 years since he founded with a professional friend the Social and Spiritual
Assistance Group, in Santo Antônio do Descoberto, in the central state of Goiás, where
he gives free check-ups to the community.
The smile is the weapon of the Rede Feminina Against Cancer. The tradition of 55 years
of volunteer work gains modern appearances with more efficiency. For 20 years Magda Eglée
Angelini Joyce, 65 years old, has retraced the same route: four times a week she leaves
home in the morning from the neighborhood of Brooklin, in the south of São Paulo, and
goes to the Hospital do Câncer, where she is head of the adult clinic. She is ready to go
to work at 8:30, wearing her pink apron to coordinate a team of 85 volunteers. With her
colleagues, Magda works an average of eight hours a day, without receiving a single cent,
in order to make the existence of the hospital patients less painful.
"We talk with people who receive exam results, give meals to solitary patients,
and help physicians find their records," Magda describes, in explaining about her
activities. Discouragement and tiredness are words that do not make up her vocabulary.
"I only ask for the strength to continue working for a long time," she says,
with pride, about being a member of one of the oldest volunteer groups in the country, the
Rede Feminina de Combate ao Câncer.
Idealized 55 years ago by Carmen Prudente, who founded the Hospital of Cancer with her
husband, oncologist Antônio Prudente, the Rede Feminina became an essential piece of the
daily life of the hospital. "Carmen began building the Rede in 1946. In that era, the
object was to raise money to build the hospital, inaugurated in 1953," the current
president of the Rede Feminina, Liana Maria Carraro de Moraes, explains.
With time, the work of the volunteers has changed. Today, they do a little of
everything. They give emotional support to the patient, accompany sick people in exams,
distribute crackers and coffee, and recycle donations that the entity receives. All of the
activities have a common mark: a smile. "Our slogan is happiness, in the hospital
there cannot be sadness," explains Magda.
Many things changed since she entered the Hospital do Câncer for the first time,
through an invitation from a friend. "The integration of the volunteers with the
physicians and nurses began to intensify and the support for our work improved,"
Magda says. All of the volunteers of the Hospital do Câncer take courses, periodically,
to improve the quality of their work.
And, if it depends on the plans of the president of the Rede, 2001 will be a year of
new accomplishments. In February, a campaign was launched to increase the number of
volunteers in the Hospital do Câncer, with the assumption that the volunteer does not
necessarily need to go to an institution, but can work at home or in his/her office.
Liana explained her idea, in tune enough with the modern concepts of voluntary work,
which requires efficiency, organization, and even, a certain dose of professionalization.
"Many other things can be done, besides taking care of the sick; people can be useful
using their professional experience." One example is the most recent public campaign
of the entity, realized with volunteer work by professionals.
Religious Volunteers
Anthropologist Leilah Landim, who in partnership with sociologist Maria Celi Scalon
analyzed the results of the IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e
Estatística—Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) study, concluded that
it is the religious institutions and social assistance that monopolizes the majority of
the volunteers. Over half (57 percent) participate in some activity tied to churches,
congregations, and other entities of a religious nature. Other 17 percent are distributed
in asylums, orphanages, and nurseries. The Pastoral da Criança, of the Catholic
Church, is one of the good examples of the practice of volunteer work. The dedication to
saving the lives of child's malnutrition allowed the pastoral to be nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
Still, according to the study, the rest of the Brazilian volunteers dedicate themselves
to the health areas, education, the defense of human rights, and community action. But
what brings so many people to find time and disposition to do volunteer work? The study
revealed that instead of money, volunteers found other forms of retribution:
"It is the desire to work. The satisfaction to know that I can help someone in
need. It is not money that pays," guarantees Cristhyne Queiroz de Carvalho, 36, who
has worked as a volunteer since childhood. "What pays me for my work is the
satisfaction of others." "When a person tells of their situations having
improved, it satisfies me," says librarian Narda Paula Mendes, 44, volunteer from
Arco-Íris, a group that gives care to people infected with AIDS.
Millions of people such as the phonoaudiologist Cristhyne and the librarian Paula
Mendes find time to donate their time and talents to whoever needs it. It is not
necessarily people with more time available that dedicates their time voluntarily.
"There are busy people that want to contribute. People with a lot of free time end up
doing nothing," affirms Olívia Volker, the technical head of the Volunteer Center of
the Federal District.
Of the group, the pediatrician Jocélio Coelho is the only one that does not state that
he is religious. "I am spiritualistic, only. But other physicians have
religion," he states. According to the study of Ibope, the practitioners of a
religion are the most likely to give. Around 53 percent of the weekly frequenters of some
religious cult give donations. The proportion falls to 39 percent between those that
participate in the meetings a few times a year.
It is the poor that are most willing to help. Pastoral shows the force of the places of
sympathy and gives example of administration. Who gains the least, gives the most. Mário,
with Sérgio, and Sérgio Luiz, of the group Attitude: "What unites us is the love of
the cause. Our example should be followed."
The Pastoral da Criança belongs to the Catholic Church. But not only with the spirit
of religious charity did the entity transform into the largest and most successful example
of voluntary service in Brazil. The battalion of 145,000 volunteers counts on the
financing of the Ministry of Health and also of the Ministry of Education. To give you an
idea, today over 80 percent of the budget of the Pastoral comes from the treasury of the
federal government. Relatively inexpensive contributions for the Union, once the annual
budget of the entity equates to the cost of maintaining a single functioning hospital for
108 days.
"We are convinced that the public power, here or in whatever place, will not be
able to reach everyone. For this reason, partnerships such as this with the federal
government and the Pastoral are fundamental," observes Osmar Terra, executive
secretary of the Active Community (a program that contributes diverse social actions in
the poorer municipalities of the country, always with the participation of the community
and of the non-governmental organizations.
The founders of the Pastoral also deserve credit for the way they organized their work.
In 1983, amidst critics from within and from outside the Church, they began the entity
taking into account a very particular characteristic of the Brazilians—the force of
the redes de solidariedade (solidarity networks) made up of family members and
friends. Today, 90 percent of the volunteers of the entity live in the pockets of poverty
of the country. As strange as that seems, the disadvantaged population is more capable of
helping the poor of the country than the middle or upper classes.
According to the study done by Ibope in 1998, the population that receives between one
and two minimum salaries gives 3.6 percent of their income, compared with 0.8 percent of
those that earn over 20 minimum salaries. One of the explanations for this altruism is
rightly the redes de solidariedade. The friends and family members help where they
can those in the most need. As the privation is more, the demand for assistance—with
money or services, such as to help build a house or dig a water well—is also greater.
Andréia Oliveira, 25 years old, a volunteer of the Pastoral in Brasília, is an
example of how being close to the reality of poverty awakens a social conscience. An
inhabitant of Taguatinga Sul, she goes once a month to the Chácara Santa Luzia, a
squatter area next to the city of Ceilândia. She does this with four other friends. All
of them work or study, and two have children. They are far from being part of the elite of
the capital. But…they make it a point to help the 68 malnutritioned children who live
in the Chácara Santa Luzia.
Youth Volunteers
Brasília has an army of well-intentioned youth. The research of Kanitz and Associates,
a consulting firm, reveals that the city's youth participation in volunteer work is below
the national average, which is 5 percent. In compensation, 70 percent of the adolescents
of the federal capital say they can dedicate themselves to social action on the weekends.
The research shows that the percentage of youths in the country that is willing to
dedicate Saturday mornings or Sundays to volunteer work is 68 percent. That is an
excellent number, since four years ago the statistics were only 48 percent.
The group Atitude is one of the examples of youth involvement in the Federal District.
Formed three years ago, the project is an effort to help disseminate information to
prevent the spread of AIDS. The group already put this work into action together with at
least 15,000 youths enrolled in public schools of the Federal District. For the people of
Atitude, volunteerism is to be taken seriously. "People have the impression that
volunteer work is something random, sporadic, careless and irresponsible. But it is not:
people study and work for this," said Sérgio de Cássio, one of the members of the
group to daily Correio Braziliense.
The three volunteers of Atitude lost track of how many times they needed to take from
their wallet the money spent on bus passes and work material. "Many people give a
mountain of excuses for not being a volunteer. But our example should be followed. What
unites us is the love of the cause," says volunteer Mário Rocha. The group Atitude
uses art to conquer their public target. During three months, the volunteers work in the
schools and discuss with the youth themes about health and behavior. The students use
music, painting, theater, graffiti, or poetry, to show what they learned.
And they do learn. About their bodies, about each other, and even sex education.
"Girls start to learn that they need to touch their own body. Many of them felt sick
about touching themselves. But how can a person learn to use a condom without knowing
themselves?" says Sérgio de Cássio. For him, the volunteer work is an important
step to feel and act like a citizen. "It makes me know my neighborhood, my school,
and my city. The return is not financial. What is received in exchange makes me feel
integrated in my time," he explains. Mário Rocha goes farther. "What motivates
people is anger. It is disconcerting to see the government unprepared to work with the
problems of the population."
The editor of the Youth Media of the News Agency of the Childhood Rights (Mídia
Jovem da Agência de Notícias dos Direitos da Infância), or Andi, Veet Vivarta,
affirms that the youth activism is a form of giving space to the creative force of the
youth. "The boy stops performing the figurative role or the work for the actions done
by adults. He receives recognition for the actual force and capability to contribute to
the solution to the social problems," she analyzes.
For Vivarta, the volunteer work performed by youth serves as an example for the
authorities. "The country, now, has a collection of good projects that succeeded and
can very well be implemented," he says. Such successful actions contribute to
increase the number of youngsters interested in involving themselves in social causes by
way of volunteer work. According to the professor and business consultant Stephen Kanitz,
who studies activities of the third sector in the country, 54 percent of the youth want to
be volunteers.
Businesses
Today, many businesses, mostly the smaller ones, with only one to ten workers,
contribute in some way to the national voluntary effort. According to Anna Peliano,
researcher for the Ipea (Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas Aplicadas—Institute of
Applied Economic Researches), the largest part of the initiatives of the businesses (57
percent) attends to some specific need of the workers (giving medicine, school material,
or other stuff), or of the community (snacks for nurseries, for example). Since last year,
the Ipea is doing a survey about how many businesses maintain social actions in Brazil.
Just like people, who for the most part participate in volunteer work for religious
reasons, businesses that act in social areas do so for moral reasons. Data collected by
the Ipea show that 23 percent of them, independent of size, become active in assistance
activities when they become aware of the poverty of the community or of certain workers.
The number of professionals willing to contribute their knowledge to the institutions
is also increasing. Many Internet sites have been multiplying, which are worried about
placing these professionals in contact with the entities that need them. In Porto Alegre,
the Non-Governmental Organization called Parceiros Voluntários (Volunteer Partners) is
going beyond this: It is able to obtain through a group of almost 100 businesses true
"packages," with professionals of different areas, offering them to the third
sector.
Together, the volunteers become younger and more professionalized. In the opinion of
Dora Lúcia Breener, president of the Brazilian-Israelite Union of Social Well Being
(União Brasileiro-Israelita do Bem Estar Social, or Unibes), this is good for the third
sector. "It is no longer enough to have good desires to successfully carry the
institutions," she says. "It is necessary to organize them according to business
principles."
"It is possible to be a volunteer as far as the imagination permits," says
Bruno Ayres, the coordinator of the Portal do Voluntário (the internet site) and one of
the creators of the RedeVoluntários. "People need to be volunteers at home, in their
neighborhoods, in school, in every place," says Milu Vilela, from the Committee of
the International Year of the Volunteer in Brazil.
In this process, there will arise suspicions that the government is stimulating the
third sector in order to get out of their own responsibilities. Among the people that work
in this area, however, it is increasingly clear that even though they can provoke
transformations in social relations, they do not substitute the role of the State. Viviane
Senna, president of the Ayrton Senna Institute, notes that, while the institutions that
work with volunteers take care of localized actions, it falls to the government the
formulation of public politics to deal with large social problems.
In Christmas of 1997, the shelter João Paulo II, of Porto Alegre, closed its doors.
Without money to continue supporting its activities, it sent the 35 boys it was sheltering
back to the place they had come from: the streets. But, when the community discovered the
closing of the shelter, the population went to work. Immediately they began to receive
donations and the following day, the shelter reopened.
Among the people that were interested in helping was Maria Elena Pereira Johannpeter,
an idealist and founder of Parceiros Voluntários, an ONG that is dedicated to establish
contact between people who want to work voluntarily and institutions that need this work.
Upon analyzing the work of the shelter, she perceived that immediate help was not enough.
It was necessary to interrupt the cycle of successive crises.
In the opinion of Maria Elena, who was interviewed by daily O Estado de S. Paulo,
the institution only would survive if it could count on specialized volunteers, that would
help strategic planning, control the distribution of the moneys, organize good money
drives, take care of marketing, in the assistance of children. In the following weeks, she
dedicated herself principally to the search of these specialists. Now, three years later,
the facts prove that she was right.
The shelter now works without the ghost of crises, with the help of 76 volunteers, who
work in four areas: medical service, administrative support, sociopedagogical support, and
fund raising. Just for the odontological needs there are 13 dentists who work with the
kids, between 7 and 17 years.
The case of the Shelter João Paulo II, according to Maria Elena, gives an idea of the
change that is happening in the country. She states that the volunteer work is part of the
Christian culture and exists in Brazil since the arrival of the Portuguese. "The
difference now is the organization, the work to make it more efficient, with better
results for the society," she affirms. "We are going beyond assistencialism,
entering the territory of citizenship."
Kim Richardson has an MA in Latin American History from The University
of Texas at Austin. He is currently working on his PhD, researching Church and State
Relations in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. He can be contacted at krichardson@mail.utexas.edu
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