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Interview with Rodrigo Reis, the Executive director of Global Attitude Institute from Brazil

13.05.2020

On May 11, in our Instagram account @youthrussia we hosted a live stream with Rodrigo Reis, a social entrepreneur from Brazil, the Executive Director of the Global Attitude Institute and an elected representative to the Brazilian National Youth Council.

The conversation with Rodrigo focused on youth entrepreneurship, youth policy implementation in Brazil, and the impact of the pandemic on Brazilian youth.

At the very beginning of Rodrigo’s career while he lived in Europe, he worked in the sphere of education. He was hired by the European Youth Parliament (the branch of the European Parliament based in Brussels). “It was a great responsibility to educate young people about the European values and how the Parliament works as a political block,” he said. He worked with Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkans. That inspired him and then he came to Brazil to set up Global Attitude, which is an NGO with a focus on international youth cooperation, education and social enterprise.

Rodrigo started his project in 2012 at the age of 27-28. He explained that it was very clear to him that there was lack of youth participation or civil society representation in the context of international organizations or economic blocks in Brazil. “Young people were not represented in BRICS, G20, etc. And huge international organizations like the UN didn’t have youth representation in Brazil. My idea was to make it possible for young people in Brazil to understand what was the meaning of these international spaces and also to find ways to engage in their activities and participate in international fora,” Rodrigo said.

While setting up his own NGO, Rodrigo faced several challenges. He said it’s always a long process to get credibility and to become recognized, especially among young people. He also stressed that one can do a great job but if one doesn’t have credible partners and media coverage people won’t get to know about the organization.

Rodrigo emphasized that Global Attitude collaborates both with national and international partners. “We are requested by different governments or international organizations to bring young people to international meetings and then they offer scholarships. So we organize selection process among young people who would have never had another oppotunity to go to the UN, other organizations or countries,” he explained.

Rodrigo talked a lot about social enterpreneurship activities of his organization. According to him, Global Attitude is a mix of an NGO and a social enterprise. “It’s essential for an organization to be funded to concentrate on working issues. We also try to expand our partnership with universities and companies and offer them services that we do well,” he stressed.

Rodrigo has been working with the Brazilian National Youth Council (CONJUVE) for two mandates already. He explained that unlike the National Youth Council of Russia, the Brazilian one is not an NGO. It is a consultative body that works with the National Youth Secretariat of Brazil. CONJUVE is composed of civil society (individuals and NGOs) and governmental representatives that work with young people.

As part of his responsibilities at the National Youth Council of Brazil, Rodrigo is currently a member of the Brazilian UN Interagency Advisory Group on Youth. It consists of representatives from various UN agencies keeping an eye on youth activities in the region. “There is someone from the UN, someone from UNESCO, someone from UN-Women and so on. They have monthly meetings, where they discuss the UN work from different perspectives related to youth,” explained Rodrigo. According to him, the organization has done a lot of great work to help deprived youth and young women. At the same time, he noticed that the efficiency of the UN agencies depends directly on their partnerships with local organizations.

Сoronavirus affected the activity of Global Attitude tremendously, because they had been working in public schools, which are now closed. COVID-19 changed all their plans for 2020. At the same time, they are trying to be proactive and to see pandemic as an opportunity to work with young people in different formats. “Now we do a lot of information sharing and showing young people what is important. We trying to raise awareness,” – noted Rodrigo.

During the interview Rodrigo addressed many other interesting issues. Therefore, we highly recommend you to watch the full interview via link: https://youtu.be/aB8yoCFI2yI