Family for Every Child: Conversations on Care

Episode 20: O valor do intercâmbio de práticas entre OSCs locais com a ABTH, Brasil

March 01, 2023 Family For Every Child Season 1 Episode 20
Family for Every Child: Conversations on Care
Episode 20: O valor do intercâmbio de práticas entre OSCs locais com a ABTH, Brasil
Show Notes Transcript

O podcast de hoje explora o papel do intercâmbio de práticas entre organizações locais da sociedade civil em diferentes partes do mundo.

O episódio é apresentado por Monica Alkmim, a Coordenadora Executiva da Organização dos Direitos Humanos, Projeto Legal, no Brasil. O Projeto Legal é um dos membros fundadores da aliança Family for Every Child. A Monica é acompanhada por Raum Batista, Assessor Técnico da Associação Brasileira Terra dos Homens, também membro fundador da aliança Family e outra organização sediada no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

A Terra dos Homens trabalha com crianças e famílias em situações de violência para evitar a separação e proporcionar uma continuidade de opções de cuidado, incluindo apoio à reintegração, acolhimento temporário e reforma institucional.

À luz da recente visita de Raum a Ruanda, Mônica e Raum discutem como o compartilhamento de experiências e conhecimentos entre regiões e contextos pode nos ajudar como profissionais a fortalecer nosso trabalho e melhorar os resultados para as crianças e famílias que apoiamos.

Você pode nos ajudar a espalhar a palavra e se engajar ainda mais em nossas conversas e atividades, juntando-se à nossa comunidade na Plataforma da comunidade Changemakers for Children. Visite changemakersforchildren.community para registrar-se. 

00:00:00 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Family for Every Child's Conversations on Care podcast. My name is Mônica Alkmim. I am the executive coordinator of the Human Rights Organization Projeto Legal here in Brazil.
00:00:19 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Projeto Legal is one of the founding members of this important alliance, Family for Every Child, which today is a growing network of 46 civil society organizations from different countries working in a total of 38 countries.
00:00:37 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | These organizations have wide knowledge and experience after years working with children and communities to develop solutions to improve the care of these children and their families.
00:00:52 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | In this podcast we can hear directly from professionals about how they are providing care to vulnerable children and their families around the world in many other countries.
00:01:10 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | In today's podcast, we will explore the role of exchanging practices between local civil society organizations in different parts of the world, considering how the sharing of experiences and knowledge across regions and contexts can help us as professionals to strengthen our work and improve outcomes for the children and families we support, across the diverse cultures and countries that make up the Family For Every Child network.
00:01:49 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | And now I have the immense pleasure to welcome Raum Batista, a partner, an activist, a militant in the area of human rights of children and adolescents here in Brazil.
00:02:05 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | He is a technical advisor at the Associação Brasileira Terra dos Homens and is also a founding member of the Family alliance. Yet another organization based here in Rio de Janeiro. Today, in Brazil, we have these two organizations, which are Projeto Legal and the Associação Brasileira Terra dos Homens (ABTH).
00:02:25 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Terra dos Homens works with children and families in situations of violence to prevent separation and provide a continuum of care options, including support for reintegration, temporary foster care, and institutional reform, for policies, proposed public policies that make a real difference in the lives of these children and their families.
00:02:56 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Approximately, 80% of the children in institutions and organizations in Brazil have some sort of family tie that is still recoverable. And ABTH specializes in a well-tested holistic and systemic approach. ABTH works directly with children and families.
00:03:22 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | And Raum recently participated in a practice exchange visit to another fundamental Family member, Uyisenga Ni Imanzi from Rwanda.
00:03:34 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | The purpose of the visit was to learn about and observe the use of new therapeutic methodologies to develop ABTH’s work in supporting the mental health of children, adolescents, and their families.
00:03:48 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Hi, Raum. How nice to find you here, even though I have met you in many other places of policy development and establishment here in Brazil. Thank you very much for being here, for this dialogue that is about to begin.
00:04:05 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | So, to start with, I would like to know what I have forgotten here in my introduction. There are a lot of things that were not said about ABTH. But what do you think is important for us to talk about at this moment about the focus areas of ABTH, here in Brazil and also outside of Brazil? Hi, Raum.

00:04:27 | RAUM BATISTA | Hi, Mônica. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone listening to this podcast from Family For Every Child, our alliance.
00:04:42 | RAUM BATISTA | Mônica, it is a pleasure to be here with you in this meeting. You, who are an activist in the area of human rights, children and adolescents, an inspiration for us. And being here, talking to you, so you can listen to me for a while, to what I will bring from my experience. I think it will be nice to have this conversation with you and with those who will listen to us afterwards as well. So, it is a pleasure to be here.
00:05:09 | RAUM BATISTA | Mônica, before talking about ABTH, I am going to talk about the place where we are, Rio de Janeiro. So, for those who are listening to us, come and see Rio de Janeiro. It is a wonderful city, but it carries a lot of Brazilian history.
00:05:28 | RAUM BATISTA | This is where most of the slave traffic in Brazil took place, when this was still a colony, as it was a major port for unloading enslaved people coming from Africa, so Rio has a lot of culture and a lot of history. So, I invite everyone to come here.
00:05:49 | RAUM BATISTA | And also, as I am bringing here a little bit of the context of Brazil at the time when Brazil was still a colony, that is, before Rio de Janeiro was this city, people lived here, like the Tupinambás, the Tamoios. Near here, the Goitacazes, all in this region.
00:06:09 | RAUM BATISTA | They were original indigenous peoples, who lived here before it became a colony, and today I refer to them to honor them and also to honor the Yanomami people, who today, in the north of our Brazil, have suffered several violations of their rights and, at least now, we are looking at them and trying to guarantee these rights.
00:06:33 | RAUM BATISTA | So, I make all these references because they are a little of our history, aren’t they, Mônica? We are a very diverse country. We have lived with indigenous people, people coming from Africa, at the time, coerced, so the population of Brazil was quite black, very diverse, and this makes us a very plural and unique democracy, doesn’t it?
00:06:58 | RAUM BATISTA | And ABTH has been working for more than 25 years on this issue of children and adolescents, whether outside the home, in a shelter, or on the street, to always strengthen them, so that they are always in a family. Be it in the nuclear family, in the extended family, but that they are in a safe place.
00:07:18 | RAUM BATISTA | Today we work in a community, in community work, in a very violent slum to strengthen the bonds of those children that live in that place.
00:07:30 | RAUM BATISTA | And I will point out that we are even working together with the alliance, with Family on the theme that is "Child and Adolescent Care in the Extended Family or Kinship Care". I think this is a very recent theme here in Brazil. We have advanced a lot in alternative care, children in shelters, children in foster families, and recently we are focusing on this care of children still in their extended families and avoiding foster care and strengthening this place.
00:08:01 | RAUM BATISTA | We are also part of national networks, such as the Movimento Nacional Pró Convivência Familiar e Comunitária (National Movement for Family and Community Life), which is a network of political dissidence throughout Brazil.
00:08:10 | RAUM BATISTA | I think I have summarized here a little more about ABTH, so thank you.

00:08:18 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Raum, I always learn a lot from you. Whenever we talk I learn something more, so it is always very nice.
00:08:26 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | It is interesting, this reference that you make, because, without a doubt, Brazil is an example of what is possible and what we should not experience, right? The situation that you report, that is happening in Roraima, with the native peoples, the Yanomami, is a clear situation of basic violations, of what can happen and of what should never happen and that should shock us. It shocked the whole of Brazil, it shocked the world.
00:08:50 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | And several networks which we are part of, you and I, that Projeto Legal and ABTH are part of, are mobilizing so that these policies, these... Because they are policies, it was not unintentional, it was intentional. It was the extermination of a people.
00:09:13 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Well, I wanted, from everything we have talked about here, to get into our topic, because at some point I am going to ask two questions together so that you can talk about both things.
00:09:23 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | First, how did the proposal of your visit to Rwanda come about? I have also been to Rwanda, and besides being a beautiful country, it is also a country of many violations, of many learnings, many experiences, and I would like you to tell me about where this came from and also that you tell me a little about your experience in Kigali and what great learnings you bring back from there, of this moment, that you tell me a little about your trip, not only about what you found there, but what you brought back here, for us to talk about here in Brazil.

00:10:02 | RAUM BATISTA | So I went to Rwanda to attend the International Narrative Therapy and Community Work Conference, it's an approach that comes from Michael White from Australia.
00:10:27 | RAUM BATISTA | During the pandemic, working a little in ABTH, we were always looking for new tools and new working methodologies, with children and adolescents, to work in this area of mental health.
00:10:40 | RAUM BATISTA | So I got to know about Narrative Practices through a very well-known professional here in Brazil, Lúcia Helena Abdalla, and she invited me: "Look, Raum, there is going to be a Conference in Rwanda. Come, I would like to invite you to go."
00:10:56 | RAUM BATISTA | And in the negotiations, taking advantage of the fact that it was in Rwanda, I invited ABTH, together with Family, and we have a great partner in Rwanda, who is Chaste from the NGO Uyisenga Ni Imanzi, which is coordinated by Chaste Uwihoreye.
00:11:19 | RAUM BATISTA | And we made this partnership, since we would be going to this event, and he also works with this approach, so it would be a great opportunity, not only to meet with Chaste, but to learn from him, to witness his practice, this exchange of experiences. And I thought: "Can we adapt it to our Brazilian context?
00:11:45 | RAUM BATISTA | I will quote a little of what I learned from Rwanda, because I see a lot of similarities between what the people of Rwanda lived, and Brazil, Mônica, even more because they are different countries, completely different contexts, but they lived an extremely serious situation, a genocide, one of the biggest genocides in the world, in the 90's, of the same people, in the same country.
00:12:23 | RAUM BATISTA | The people were so divided during colonization that they started dividing and stratifying themselves, they started venting so much anger, one people on the other, that they started killing each other. Neighbors killed neighbors, teachers killed students, acquaintances killed acquaintances, because of differences: "I am Hutu, you are Tutsi," and they started killing each other. It was a horrible genocide.
00:12:45 | RAUM BATISTA | I'm not going to bring this story up a little bit, but just so you have a context, why we are telling it and why it struck me.
00:12:54 | RAUM BATISTA | And this conference took place precisely in Rwanda because the organizers of the event realized that if they had been through such a terrible situation, one in which in three months more than 1.3 million people died, massacred by machetes, by all kinds of weapons, they had been through great trauma. The whole country. And today, almost 30 years later, how did they overcome this trauma? What skills did they develop, so they managed to create a methodology, to create a mechanism to work with people, children, adults, the elderly and overcame this trauma?
00:13:39 | RAUM BATISTA | So, I was very interested in that. What methodology did they develop to deal with such a serious fact that they experienced?
00:13:47 | RAUM BATISTA | But, you talked about learning, I'll cite four lessons that Rwanda marked me for and I carry with me.
00:13:56 | RAUM BATISTA | The first lesson is that, as much as they have gone through such a genocide, and today, for them to overcome it has become a national policy, for they understand that they are one people. As diverse as the people of Rwanda are, they are one people. They rescued it from their origin before the colonization of the country. They were one people, despite three or four different ethnicities. They were one people. And after the genocide, they take that up and say, "We have to live with our differences, know how to deal with each other." Today they take that up again.
00:14:43 | RAUM BATISTA | The second point that caught my attention is: "never forget". The genocide took place all over the country. So, in each city, they created memorials that tell this story. In these memorials, stories, accounts, and situations are preserved. For example, I visited a church near Kigali, the Ntarama memorial, and the person who led this visit was Leonard, a professor who experienced the genocide. He was already an old man.
00:15:21 | RAUM BATISTA | It wasn't easy for him to tell the story of the genocide, but he made sure to tell it, "I'm telling you so you can tell it to other people because this can't happen again." So this account of his marked me. These memorials are for us to remember a fact so that it doesn't happen again. It has to be registered.
00:15:43 | RAUM BATISTA | The third point is the Gacaca Courts, which they have set up in various parts of the country, which are to hold perpetrators accountable. It is a kind of court, and you will like it, Mônica, because it has a lot to do with restorative justice. I am very much associated with restorative justice, which we are trying hard to implement in Brazil, but it is not advancing. There is some slow progress in some places.
00:16:08 | RAUM BATISTA | But I see the Gacaca Courts as restorative justice. But, like it or not, that court has imprisoned more than 30,000 people for accountability. So there is no way. Here in Brazil we say: "We experienced amnesties in the past”. Today, we fight for no amnesty for those who commit genocide. These people that are there and did something with the Yanomami people, we have to hold them responsible in some way. We can't just live through something and let it go. So this is similar.
00:16:38 | RAUM BATISTA | And the last point that strikes me, the lesson that I bring back from Rwanda, is that there was investment. Instead of improving the economy, they invested in improving the mental health of the people. They improved health, they created mechanisms to invite people after that massacre. I mean, the first school of psychology was near the year 2000. Almost five years later they created a school of Psychology in Rwanda.
00:17:01 | RAUM BATISTA | So, by trial and error, they had to look at the methodology of several countries to see which one applied to the people. And today there are several methodologies, but it seems that Narrative Practice is one that has worked, that has helped them to overcome the traumas, and has helped them to better deal in community, in short. So, their investment is in the quality of helping each other. In this collective approach to healing.
00:17:30 | RAUM BATISTA | So, these were four lessons that I carry with me and I think that Brazil can mirror many of these practices.

00:17:38 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Wow, Raum, how interesting. Every moment while you were talking, I was visualizing several things. I went to the memorial in Kigali, in one of the Family assemblies that we had, and we made a quick visit, Stella and I, but it is so emotional that no one needs to say anything, you don't need to read anything, the image of the machetes, as you represented here, the bloody clothes... It is an emotion without words.
00:18:09 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Then you went on, talking about what they had lived. I thought so much about the massacres, Raum. The massacres that we live through here in Rio de Janeiro. The Jacarezinho massacre. How the people live, you know, the residents of these regions after a situation of massacre, the lessons you brought and we can discuss.

00:18:36 | RAUM BATISTA | Mônica, I remember the massacre here in Jacarezinho [a favela in Rio de Janeiro], 28 people killed in a police incursion in a violent way. I remember later, they held a memorial outside the community. I don't know if you saw it on TV. They put up a plaque with the names of the people killed. On the same day a guy came and broke it. So we can't even honor the people that died. There is no time for us to honor them.

00:19:03 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | It's interesting, they broke it because they saw the importance of the memorial. That's why they broke it, because they saw its importance. So when you say, the first point, that we are one people, which is that, "I am what you are, so I am not alone. I am, I'm in a society, I'm in a collective, I am what you are."
00:19:26 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | The second one you say is a motto that we use a lot here in the human rights movements. "Never forget." "One who has no memory does not come home." That's a sentence we use a lot, "Those who have no memory, don't come home."
00:19:39 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | And the power of oral history. You brought that, the power that the person you had contact with, the teacher, "I'll tell you so you can tell others." Because it's important that by telling the story it becomes your story too. This is the power of the oral story. You may not have lived through it, but by telling it, the story becomes yours.
00:20:01 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | The courts, how difficult restorative justice is for us, isn't it, Raum. how difficult it is for us, and this is what we are living now, without amnesty. Some issues cannot be granted amnesty. Brazil is living this war cry: "No amnesty".
00:20:17 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | And the investment in mental health. It's interesting how mentally healthy people rebuild themselves. You don't need an external construct. These are super interesting points. And I also want to know for my own interest: what are you and ABTH are thinking here in Brazil, to unfold these experiences, if you have already thought of something, if you are already planning, because you brought... I really want, after this podcast, to schedule another conversation for us to continue. I can imagine the plans you are already making here in Brazil.

00:21:01 | RAUM BATISTA | We are, in fact, I am very interested, but also ABTH, in getting to know these methodologies that have helped or are helping other countries. In Family for Every Child itself we have a group, we have several working groups. One of the working groups is the mental health group. And we have been exchanging, getting to know a little about the work done by Rita, from Butterflies, from India; Stella, from Taller de Vida, from Colombia; Juconi, from Mexico; Alexandra, from Paraguay. They are people who work with very interesting methodologies, which can be adapted to our context. I think that what I learned with Chaste, in the Narrative Practices, and what was already being done here, in a certain way, by Lúcia Helena, I think has something to contribute.
00:22:03 | RAUM BATISTA | And I applied the Time da Vida, which is a methodology, a metaphor, that uses the Time da Vida to talk about the children being able to talk about a difficult situation that they experienced, but in a safe way. And at the same time, talk about their dreams and abilities. It is a methodology... You use soccer to talk about this. You will use a soccer team to talk about the difficulties and abilities. It is through this metaphor. And we applied this in the Mangueirinha Community, with boys, with youngsters, who are serving their probation sentence, in a partnership with the city hall.
00:22:49 | RAUM BATISTA | And the feedback was very interesting, and not speaking about them, but about me, applying this methodology. I experienced more, I left the technical, professional place, the consulting room, the closed place, and I played a lot more.
00:23:06 | RAUM BATISTA | I listened to music, recited poems, laughed, and, at the same time, worked on a serious and collective issue. So it was a very creative methodology to talk about trauma and talk more about responses to trauma.

00:23:30 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Raum, now, as we finish our conversation, for these contacts, these exchanges between pairs of families, between countries, do you think we need some differentiated structure? For example, another Family member who wants to know the experience in another country. Do you think that for this end we need something more structured, or do we go with an open mind to know the experience of the other? What would you suggest for Family in these practice exchange experiences?

00:24:12 | RAUM BATISTA | I would first like to talk about how I learned a little bit from Chaste, from his work. Because that will make it a little clearer, even for the members of Family, our colleagues, for us to understand the importance of having an investment in meetings like these, not only between two organizations, but more organizations, but for exchanges and experiences.
00:24:42 | RAUM BATISTA | To say that, first, before explaining and thanking the work that I have experienced, to say that we promote several meetings, be it for Family, be it here in Brazil, we have several meetings, seminars, presentations of my work. When we experience it, we get to know a different methodology, but very much in the rational order. It is interesting how this methodology works. Juconi’s work is very interesting. I am giving an example, right? Or here, of an NGO here in Brazil that also does an interesting job, when we go to a lecture, we understand, we want to know.
00:25:22 | RAUM BATISTA | But when you have the opportunity to experience it, which I had the opportunity to do in Rwanda, I went there to talk to Chaste: "Wait a minute, come and do an activity with us." I was not alone, I was with other Brazilians. So he brought us together and went to apply his methodology with us. So you perceive it, you have an experience with it, knowing the much greater dimension, you understand what you heard him talking about in a seminar and experienced it. I think that the two ways are in common.
00:25:58 | RAUM BATISTA | And there is a sentence that... To give you an idea, I think this is also cool, Mônica, that these methodologies... Let's think that we are talking about Rwanda. From what I understand, not all European methodologies fit all contexts. European or from other countries. It doesn't mean that... If I'm going to take a methodology to a place, there's no point in colonizing it, saying that my methodology is better than yours.
00:26:27 | RAUM BATISTA | Maybe Narrative Practice somehow fits. Because there, they value, and Chaste does this a lot, they value the knowledge of the community. The knowledge and the value of working in groups. To give you an idea, they gather children to tell the child's story and another one to listen. This other listener has to write down what she heard in the form of poetry, or music, what that story reminded her of in the form of poetry to later give as a present.
00:27:00 | RAUM BATISTA | In other words, if I have listened to a difficult story, I will honor that person. Because she told me, it is not easy for someone to tell a difficult story, so I will honor it. Then I give it back through a song, a proverb. In other words, I refer to what we have here in Brazil, that we are a reverse society, but that we also have collective characteristics coming from the original peoples, other African peoples in Brazil, that the ways of taking care of each other are always collective, but we also have characteristics from us, who are Europeans, individualized, or from North Americans. We live with this.
00:27:42 | RAUM BATISTA | But when I saw this work in Rwanda, which is much more collective, much more musical, that is, when we experience a difficult moment, when we notice people stopping, coming back and reliving the trauma, they sing songs for that person, in a way of being together, of being with them in this process. And this collective work is important to be told.
00:28:15 | RAUM BATISTA | And finally, a metaphor, and I, and whoever is listening to us, it is also a way to honor Chaste for this, that he says the following: “When you see a stone, when you're plowing land. You are plowing the land and you come across a stone, you don't destroy it with the hoe.” And why is that? One of the important things that he does a lot is to take and separate the problem from the person, so he asks a person to tell a story, a difficult moment that she experienced. She draws on a piece of paper, and leaves the paper far away from you. The problem is there and you are here.
00:28:58 | RAUM BATISTA | So, in this stone metaphor, what does he do? The stone is like a problem. When we are able to name what bothers me, what is present all the time, what I can't express, that is bothering me. When I can say that, name it, I can see it, then I won't spend my resources, my skills on what bothers me. In other words, it is not, in a way, healing, because the fact has already happened. It is like another metaphor that he uses.
00:29:34 | RAUM BATISTA | For example: don't try to fight the facts. Or against the nightmares. But we can talk about the nightmares without getting scared. Without getting scared anymore. Then look for new tools, new skills, and new resources to deal with difficult situations, without necessarily having to break the stone. So these are details that I learned from him that help us.

00:30:04 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Interesting, Raum. Wow, very interesting. Thank you and thank you to Chaste as well, for taking these possibilities and bringing them here. So, thank you very much, Raum, thank you very much for this moment of ours here. A moment for several people who will accompany us, because we... I want to continue this conversation later.
00:30:26 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | It's a shame that the podcast is short, isn't it? But that's it. I think the purpose of the podcast is to make you want to know more. I think that's the main goal. I thank you very much for being here, for sharing so openly this moment that you lived, how you dealt with this moment, with your experience, and how you bring this to ABTH, how you bring this to Brazil, responding to the needs of people in vulnerable communities. ABTH is making a difference in these communities, with children, adolescents, and their families. Thank you very much. Do you want to make any closing remarks? We are already closing, it is a little past the limit, but do you want to say...

00:31:12 | RAUM BATISTA | Very quickly, I want to read a poem. It is not mine, but Emicida's, who is a musician, a rapper in Brazil. I think that it has a little to do with this, with the work that we do at ABTH, which is a little similar, because he does holistic work and is a little similar to this work of looking at the community and valuing it. So here I am going to recite some lines from one of Emicida's songs. The music is called "Amar Elo" (Loving Link). It's a play on the word "Amarelo" [yellow], but it's called "Amar Elo".
00:31:46 | RAUM BATISTA | And this is the end of the song, I'll read the end of the song for you:
00:31:51 | RAUM BATISTA | "Allow me to speakNot my scarsThey are supporting actorsNo, rather, extrasWho shouldn't even be here
Allow me to speakNot my scarsSo much pain steals our voiceDo you know what's left of us?Targets walking around
Allow me to speakNot my scarsIf this is about livingTo reduce me to survivalIs to steal what little good I've lived
Allow me to speakNot my scarsTo think that these scars define meIt’s the worst of crimesIt's giving the trophy to the tormentor and making us disappear"
00:32:36 | RAUM BATISTA | And to finish, he goes like this. I think you know this part.
"I've been bleeding too muchI've been crying like a dogLast year I diedBut this year I won't die"
00:32:46 | RAUM BATISTA | "Last year I died, but this year I won't die. "Thank you, Family, thank you, Mônica. 

00:32:51 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Thank you so much, Raum. Thank you to all the people, all of you who were with us now, who came together to listen to this podcast, Conversations on Care. We have other conversations, other podcasts with similar content. It's important that you guys go to our platform to register [changemakersforchildren.community]. It's important that you register as a user, if you're not already a user. It is important that you follow us on several other fronts.
00:33:19 | MÔNICA ALKMIM | Family is, I’ll say it again, Family For Every Child is in 38 countries. These experiences reported by Raum, are only one of the experiences. We have a long story, we have several experiences from our affiliated locations. It is important that you go to our networks, and search for Family For Every Child. We hope that next time you will join us, who is not here now, but listen to us and follow the other podcasts that are on our platform. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.