18 October 1994
MOVIMENTO NACIONAL DE MENINOS E MENINAS DE RUA (MNMMR)
OBJECTIVES, ACTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
WHAT IS IT ?
It is an autonomous non-governmental popular organization,
founded in 1985, composed basically of volunteers, aimed at
supporting children and adolescents in their own struggle for
securing and defending their rights as citizens.
HOW WAS IT CREATED?
The National Movement of Street Boys and Girls (MNMMR) was
neither born in a particular site in Brazil nor did it have a
sole founder. It was born as a result of a particular moment in
history combined with the joint action of groups of street
educators engaged in various assistance programs; people from
different religious organizations, instructors from goverment
institutions, and community social service agents, who have been
engaged since the early 80's in alternative efforts regarding the
assistance of street boys and girls.
In the late 70's, the situation of poor children and adolescents
- mostly known as the "minor's issue" or "street children's
issue" - had already become a grave and complex social problem.
The modernization and industrialization processes, and the
development model which the country adopted prompted the rapid
growth of large urban centers and income concentration,
aggravating existing poverty levels. Children and adolescents
have become the main victims of these processes which have
brought about increases in infant mortality rates, a fall in life
expectancy, earlier entry into the labor force, school drop out,
and an increasing presence of peddling and loitering boys and
girls on the streets.
It may be said that during this period there were basically two
views and practices regarding the handling of the problem: one of
them, generally undertaken by government initiatives, has been
characterized by its repressive and institutional approach, i.e.,
parting children and adolescents from their living environment
and confining them in reform institutions. This approach has been
regarded as authoritarian since it neither encourages nor allows
the participation of the community in its management. The other
approach, adopted by community groups and entities, has created
conditions for the boys and girls involved to formulate
alternative solutions for their own problems, through assistance
programs conducted within the context of the environment to which
they belong.
In the early 80's, the Project for Alternative Community
Assistance to Street Children (supported by UNICEF, the Ministry
of Social Security and Assistance, the National Foundation for
Minor's Welfare) was created. It's objective was to learn about
new experiences and promote their exchange. The contact among
several alternative programs and projects allowed for an intense
merger of experiences and deeper reflection about their
practices. The need for a more permanent action became evident
and prompted the creation of the first local groups. The purpose:
congregating people and social resources within the municipality
and the region in order to confront the challenges of new
practices regarding street boys and girls, and sensitize and
mobilize the community to contribute to the proposed effort.
These groups multiplied throughout various states and following
a nationwide joint initiative, decided to reate a non-
governmental popular organization for the defence and promotion
of the rights of millions of boys and girls, which has been named
the Movimento Nacional de Meninos e Meninas de Rua (MNMMR), that is, the
National Movement of Street Boys and Girls.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ACTION
Children and adolescents must be regarded as human beings in a
particular developmental stage; citizens, subject to legitimate
rights, who should participate in decisions about their lives,
their communities and society in general.
OBJECTIVES
- Encouraging the organization and education of children and
adolescents - mainly street boys and girls - in order to ensure
their participation and reflection in search of solutions for the
problems affecting them and also to secure that their citizen
rights are expressed and exercised.
- Acting as a focal point for the organization of a network of
educators, service programs and activists for the defense of
rights, with visions of breaking the isolation and maximizing the
potential of their actions for promoting and defending human and
citizen rights of children.
- Participating actively and critical in the elaboration of laws
and public policies ( health, education, labour, leisure,
transportation, culture, housing, food, freedom, etc ) in order
to guarantee their effectiveness and to reach children and
adolescents in an efficient manner, and to execute the
constitutional principle, "children: absolute priority".
- Contributing to the mobilization, organization and capacitation
of existing forces which are part of the society, in order to
promote and, defend the human and citizen rights of our children
and adolescents.
- Denouncing omissions, transgressions and violations of rights
of street boys and girls.
HOW IS IT ORGANIZED?
The Local Committee is the basic unit of the MNMMR comprised of a
minimum of five members, belonging to different children and
adolescents' rights assisting programs or similar entities,
committed to the cause and identified with the philosophy of the
MNMMR. There are three categories of members: permanent
(educators and activists), affiliated (boys and girls) and
collaborators (citizens, professional and technical advisors, and
service programs). The Committee may include more than one
municipality or in one municipality there may be more than one
Committee.
-> The Base Nucleus is the basic unit in which children and
adolescents participate (affiliated members). It may be formed by
a community, a professional category, a work site, a social
movement, a service program or any other pedagogically
appropriate form. Its structure, working dynamic and type of
activity are to be defined by the members of the Nucleus. Each
group includes, at least, one educator/chaperon who must be
registered in the Local Committee.
-> The State Committee is the highest organizational level of the
MNMMR in the states. Its duties consist of coordinating,
conducting and executing the directives and priorities of the
Movement and contributing to strengthening the Local Committees
and the Base Nucleus. The number of members, its structure and
working dynamic are defined in the state assembly.
-> The National Council is a consulting and deliberating body
formed by representatives from each state, who are elected in the
state assembly and the members of the National Executive
Committee. It's structure and working dynamic are defined in the
Internal Procedures.
-> The National Executive Committee is the highest organizational
level, the national level, of MNMMR. It includes five members
elected by the National Assembly for a two-year term and works as
a collective. The positions for which members are elected are:
National Coordinator, National Coordinator Adjunct, National
Secretaries for Organization and Finance.
-> The Fiscal Council is composed of six members elected at the
National Assembly for a two-year assignment. Three members are
permanent and the other three are deputies. The Fiscal Council's
role is to have fiscal control of management of the finances for
the various aspects of the Movement.
Today, the MNMMR is established in 24 of the 27 Brazilian states
and in the process of becoming established in the remaining
states of Roraima, Rondnia and Tocantins. There are 60 registered
Local Committees comprising nearly one thousand affiliated
educators/activists and another two thousand attached to its
action network. Through its activities it is possible to reach
nearly 10,000 children and adolescents. In addition to the
National headquarters in Brasilia, the MNMMR has state
secretariats in nearly all Brazilian states. The Local Committees
normally use premises offered by other organizations in the civil
society or the homes of activists and educators.
HOW IT WORKS?
The MNMMR actions, on one side, are aimed at defending the rights
of children and adolescents in several segments of the society,
mainly those which make decisions related to the area; on the
other, it contributes to the organization and development of boys
and girls to have more and more power as agents in their own
defence of their rights.
The MNMMR action may be grouped according to the following
operational lines:
I - SECURING AND DEFENDING RIGHTS
There are three areas of action: the legal environment, public
policies and defence against violations.
- Proposing laws for implementation at municipal, state and
national levels in order to improve the present legislation;
exercising vigilance over the Legislative Power in order to
assure the rights of children and adolescents.
- Participating in the formulation of public policies through the
councils on rights and intervening in the reshaping of government
and non-government institutions responsible for providing
services to children and adolescents, in order to improve the
quality of services provided.
- Combating the various forms of violence against children and
adolescents, i. e., child abuse, illegal imprisonment, slavery,
child labour, prostitution and, as a priority, the execution of
street children.
II - ORGANIZATION AND FORMATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS
The Base Nuclei are constituted of the children and adolescents
from the poorest population, predominently boys and girls in the
street and the working poor. This is the principal line of action
of the MNMMR. The actions undertaken are intended to bring
together, or nucleus, children and adolescents for a variety of
activities where they live, at work sites, and in the streets for
those who have the streets as their primary place, to struggle
for survival.
The nuclei are the spaces where management is shared by the boys
and girls themselves; where they can discuss their condition of
being excluded from the society; obtain information and awareness
of their rights and of the public services available, and
formulate alternative solutions for their lives. The nuclei have
two purposes: education for citizenship and the development of
the concepts of collective forms of solidarity through the
exercise of mutual support, in this regard, it is the invention
and continuous reinvention of a new ethics for human solidarity.
The pedagogical approaches are based upon the principles of
popular education put into practice by street educators and
activists of the rights of children and adolescents. The
development of leisure activities is one the main components of
this approach.
The Nucleus is the initial and basic link with the MNMMR. Beyond
this, boys and girls are free to invent, design and build their
own forms of organization. In the process of shared-management,
negotiations regarding other manners and forms of basic
relationships between the children and the educators takes place.
The purpose of which is to enable children and adolescents to
become conscious of their strength and power in order to
stimulate their role as main defenders of their own rights.
III - FORMATION OF EDUCATORS AND AGENTS OF THE DEFENCE OF RIGHTS
The MNMMR has a national system for the training and development
of educators: the Center for the Formation and Support of
Educators and Social Agents of Defence of Children and
Adolescents' Rights. Its actions comprise three areas:
capacitation, studies and research, advise and services to
assistance programs. Its structure is decentralized through,
three "Poles" ( SFo Paulo - Pole I, Belm - Pole II and Recife -
Pole III), each of which pursues a close tuning with the cultural
and regional peculiarities.
The system's action aims at encouraging reflection, debate,
exchange of experiences and conveying the necessary knowledge for
the formulation of pedagogical approaches and public policies
that attend to the needs of the diverse segments that are
composed of society's excluded children and adolescents. The
Center intends to challenge conventional practices and become
producer rather than a mere reproducer of knowledge. A goal is to
build a section for supporting services which include a library,
video facilities and direct advisement for programs of social
education.
The Local and State Committees have the same objectives and
functions of the Formation Center.
IV - STRENGTHENING AND EXPANSION
In order to develop the planned actions and possess the power to
claim, press and negotiate policies for assisting the rights of
children and adolescents, it is necessary forthe MNMMR to
strengthen internally. This is done through meetings and
assemblies which define lines, positions and strategies for the
achievement of objectives.
The MNMMR seeks further to decentralize from the capital cities
spreading throughout the interior of the country, particularly in
the average-sized cities, border areas, panning areas and the so-
called "great development projects". By doing so, it aims at
contributing to the defence of the rights of boys and girls who
live in difficult circumstances and in the process of
municipalization of the policies regarding children and
adolescents.
The importance and dimension of the struggle leads us to engage
in partnership, articulations and join in setting up tactical and
strategical alliances with other social, unionist and popular
movements which have similar principles and philosophies.
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS
- Development and organization of thousands of children and
adolescents to practice citizenship.
- Creation of opportunities for children and adolescents to
particate in a process of re-signification of their lives
resulting for many in abandoning drugs, crime or prostitution and
seek to join the educational programs.
- Promotion of municipal and state meetings and three national
meetings of street boys and girls.
- Contributions to the inclusion of the street boys' and girls'
issue in the agendas of government officials and of the Brazilian
society as a whole.
- Participation in the process of organization and strengthening
of the civil society: National Permanent Forum of Non-
governmental Entities for the Defence of the Children and
Adolescents' Rights - (DCA) and other similar forums; creating
the Brazilian branch of Defence for Children International -
(DCI); creating and articulating the network of defence centers;
articulating a network of study nuclei in the universities and
creating committees of children and adolescents' rights within
trade and central unions.
- Contributions to the defense of children's and adolescent's
rights: inclusion of Article 227 and 228 in the Federal
Constitution; articles ensuring rights in the constitutions of
most states and in the basic law of several municipalities.
Participation in the elaboration of the Children and Adolescents'
Statute and the mobilization of society for its approval by
Congress. Proposing laws for the creation of councils on rights
and protections. In short, changing the Brazilian legal
environment.
- Contributions to the changing of policies for children and
adolescents in accordance to the guidelines imposed by the
Children and Adolescents' Statute and formulated by the councils
on rights and protection.
- Capacitation of thousands of educators and activists of the
rights of boys and girls; assisting programs of direct attention
which have resulted in an exchange of experiences; improving the
quality of services and increasing the number of assisted
children through support to the emergence of new programs and
projects serving children and adolescents.
- Dissemination of the successful experiences conforming to the
Children's and Adolescent's Statute and, the production of a
pedagogical and working methodology committed to the rights, as
citizens, of the street boys and girls.
- Continuously combating the systematic violations of human and
citizen rights of children and adolescents, above all in the
struggle against the extermination of street children.
RECOGNITION OF EFFORTS OF THE MNMMR IN DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS OF
BOYS AND GIRLS
- Honourable Mention in Human Rights of 1988, presented by the
Alceu Amoroso Lima Centre for Freedom.
- Child Prize, National Priority 1990, presented by UNICEF to the
Forum of Non-governmental Entities for the Defence of the
Children and Adolescents' Rights (DCA).
- Human Rights Prize 1991, presented by the Association for Human
Rights of Ecuador.
- International Prize of Human Rights 1991, granted by the
Association for Human Rights of Spain.
- Child Prize 92, presented by the ABRINQ's Foundation of Children Rights in recognition of the creative and innovative
manner in which the MNMMR develops its work with street children and adolescents.
- Certificate celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Workers' Central Union (CUT) in 1993, in recognition of the support given
by the MNMMR to the workers struggle for the defence of democracy, union freedom and better living conditions.
- C. Henry Kempe Memorial Prize 1994, presented by the International Society for the Prevention of Abuse and Negligence
Against Children - Colorado/USA.
- Human Rights Prize 1994, presented by the Independent Bar Organization of Minnesota/USA.
Email: mnmmrsp@ax.apc.org - login Continental American
(National Movement of Street Boys and Girls)
Brazil
mnmmrsp@ax.ibase.br - login International
recrianca@ax.ibase.br - Conference of the Children - Brazil