Collectors, Environment, and Recyclables Market Project

The socio-economic model of development implemented in Brazil, characterized by high levels of unemployment and lack of inclusive public policies, has led entire families to the work of collection of recyclables. And only in the recent years it is possible to observe a higher level of recognition of the socio-economic function of recyclable materials collectors in our country. This is a result of a process of organisation of these workers, men and women, central for a humanized process of environmental and economic sustainability.

The work developed by NOVA with collectors from Rio de Janeiro in the last six years allows us to say that it is possible for a social category, primary marginalized and stigmatised, to become an organised professional activity and active in the debate of public policies, growing their level of autonomy and contributing to the increase of income from their activities.

The qualification of the work of associations and co-operatives of recyclable collectors has resulted in the strengthening of the professional identity of these citizens and in the ownership of resources, knowledge and social organisation. It has allowed them to create their own ways of organisation and participation in the debate about the recycling of solid waste and about their professional insertion in the recyclables market.

Homeless People: Warrant Network of Human Rights and Social Inclusion

The increasing number of people living in the streets is one of the negative effects of the current development model, characterised by the increase of economic inequality and social exclusion. The absolute disrespect for human rights of this social segment in our society shows itself in daily and repeated discriminations, in their lack of access to public services and goods and in their precarious conditions of life and survival.

NOVA elaborates a proposal of public policy that could attend to demands of homeless people, to guarantee their basic rights and offer to them transforming opportunities of their condition, especially those that refer to discrimination and violence that they are submitted to, and to the integral attention to their health. This proposal is a result of suggestions collected among homeless people themselves and also among educators who work and provide them with direct assistance.

The elaboration and presentation of proposals at municipal, state and national levels, that will be useful as reference to public policies targeted to this segment, ally with a permanent qualification of professionals and services offered to homeless people.

Formation in Human Rights for Children and Adolescents Project

Besides of keeping adding strengths to platforms of the Warrant System of Rights, from the protection area as well as from the assuming responsibility area, NOVA has been intensifying even more its work in public arena of debates and articulation related to children, adolescents and women's human rights.

Emphasizing qualification of Police Forces, Judiciary Power and Public Ministry interventions, this project provokes a look of strangeness at more common interpretations of violence situations, stimulating the acceptance of nuances that make possible to see and respect the "other" as subjects of rights, independently of what cultural practices say as natural or as usual. We also work articulating all segments that comprise the Warrant System of Rights, providing them with training focused to facilitate their dialogue, in the perspective of better results.

Our expectation is to carry on executing courses for policemen and policewomen, working days with promoters of justice and round of debates with judges, for a systematic reflection about intersections between cuts of diversities and violence, to contribute with the National Plan for Education in Human Rights Guidelines.

The Young and Education for Attainment of Rights Project

While always emphasizing the importance of a critical and proposal vision aiming to a real social change, the educational work of NOVA carries on privileging the debate about generational, gender, and race/ethnic questions with young people and educators from 27 communities in Rio de Janeiro, besides the production and distribution of didactic material to support educational activities.

NOVA considers that the continuity of the project development has had very significant outcomes for the consolidation of the current groups of young people, encouraging them to intensify and deepen the debate and the monitoring processes for implementation of proposals in the area of rights effectiveness, with the strengthening of local culture.

NOVA realized that the qualification of popular educators and other social segments to take part in the project development at local level can lead to a process of restructuring the functioning of schools and to a better interaction among schools and communities, widening the perspective of access to a broad and quality education as young people's rights.

Diffusing of Knowledge Project

NOVA actively takes part in permanent platforms of articulation, national and international ones, as a member of the Brazilian Association of Non-governmental Organisations (Associação Brasileira de ONGs - ABONG).

In accordance with its mission, NOVA has been systematically taking part in seminars, public hearings, speeches, meetings and other events, providing and collecting elements for reflection, dialogue and elaboration of proposals to transform current patterns of inequalities and social exclusion. For NOVA, they are opportunities to know the experience of other entities that share a common commitment with social change. At the same time, they are opportunities to widen the visibility of NOVA and the recognition of its work and capacity as an interlocutor in the debate about questions that affect socio-economic, cultural and human rights of diverse segments that have been kept apart from development or that need urgent answers to their claims.

NOVA considers fundamental to carry on with and intensify its active and historically consolidated participation in the qualification of public debate, not only in the specific areas of its social interventions but also emphatically around questions related to the democratic building of society and the role of NGOs and social movements/entities in this process.