Located in the Vila Aliança favela, in the western zone of Rio de Janeiro, “Núcleo Sócio Cultural Semente do Amanhã” teaches art to the children of current and former prison inmates. The organization participated in the capacity development workshops offered by BrazilFoundation in May, and it’s already spreading the knowledge it learned to its team. Alex dos Santos e Selmirami do Nascimento, the leaders of the organization, wrote to us about their experience:
“After the BrazilFoundation capacity building workshops, Selma and I [Alex] returned from Itaipava so inspired and with so many ideas that we quickly wanted to shared them with the entire team. With this motivation in mind, we held a meeting to show the team what we had learned. We spoke about what BrazilFoundation actually is, its functions (which was unclear to the team), their history and what they showed us. We spoke of the capacity development itself, what we did in those 4 days, what we learned and how we discovered that we needed to correct some things were doing incorrectly. We used the analogy of the ‘boat’ presented to us during the first part of the capacity building workshops to unite our team and show that everyone had the same mission. The result was wonderful. Everyone now understood that a NGO isn’t an orphanage or daycare center, but rather an institution with a motivation to change the reality of the community where it works. The team watched a video that we made about our trip. They saw how much we worked, created, learned and produced. To finish up, we invited them to enjoy a coffee-break that we prepared as a demonstration of our appreciation for all of the time that they have believed in our NGO. The result of this process, which we had never carried out at the NGO, was very positive and motivating.”
