The Seed of Hope

The Seed of Hope
- A Thought into the Future of a Young Generation in Quijingue Area -

During the last month of my life in Lagoa da Barra, I often noticed that most of the young men in the community neither went to school nor worked. They sat under the shade most of the days chatting, playing guitar, playing card games, or sleeping.
None of the young men had a fixed occupation to speak of, and the only "job" they had was helping out in their family or relative's field. Some of the young men had their own dream of becoming a
professional sports player or musicians, but majority of them, seemed to me, did not have any visions or expectations for the future. Therefore, I have decided to look into the reasons behind these situations and tried to come up with my own resolutions.

The major cause of these "jobless" young men is definitely the lack of opportunities By opportunities I mean the chance of receiving adequate and continuous education, the chance of actually finding a job, and the chance of information excess. First, poor education is one of the important reasons. Most of the schools in this region does not have
enough space or facilities to accommodate all the students at the same time. Therefore students only study for half a day, but even that is lucky
considering the fact that some lower grade students cannot go to school because there are not enough teachers to teach them. For the older students, they have to take the bus for an hour each morning to go
to the school in Quijingue. However, even there teacher randomly decides not to have a class that day because he had a hung-over from last night's party, which is ridiculously insane. It is clear that under
these poor environment, students will be discouraged from their further studying, not to mention developing their knowledge and dreams for the
future.
Second aspect is lack of jobs guaranteed. Let's say the students have overcome all the obstacles and graduated. There are not enough jobs to be offered in their communities, or even in Quijingue. The number of jobs that can be offered to the young men are too limited for it to be enough to encourage the young men. It is easy to imagine a cycle here.
Poor education fails to produce competent work force, and the lack of job discourages the student to further develop their potentials, which creates a obstacle for the education system to develop.
This is a a cycle that reproducing these "jobless" young men over and over again. Lack of information excess also contributes to this vicious cycle. It was quite a shock for me to find out that there was not a
single book store in Quijingue. Most of the families that we are working with right now in Lagoa da Barra does not have any books in their house, except for the textbooks distributed to the students. Access
to the Internet is also difficult.
Only the people living in the city of Quijingue has access to the Internet, and even that is often unstable. In the 21st century, the Era of Information, there are vast amount of information offered to everybody.
And lacking the access to all these information is definitely a big cause to the fall back Quijingue and its communities are experiencing.
Aside from the lack of objective environment and opportunities, it is also the absence of passion or vision from the people themselves that is creating this fall back of the young generation. I observed that the young men actually do not like to work.
When there are big community actions, most of the people coming to help are women and children, but not the powerful young men who is really needed.
Most of the young men just hang around in the neighborhood all day long chatting with their friends, play guitar, play card games, watch TV, or sleep. It seems to me that the young people are content with the life they are having right now and they do not have the will power to change this. Most likely it is because this is the life that was handed down from the older generation and it is the way they were raised. However, the fact that they are content with the current way of living is a big drawback to the opportunities they could have had. I am not trying to denounce their current way of life or to say that their way of life is wrong, but I am trying to emphasize the fact that they are content in only one way of life when there are so many diverse ways of life they can lead if they had the will power. Instead, they are stuck in the same pattern of life as their parents. In my opinion, this pattern is the pattern of poverty and fall backs. This pattern deprive them of the will power to earn a different, maybe better life for their future.
Then, what are some of the actions that can be taken in order to resolve this fall back of the young generations? I believe it is most
urgent and important for the government or the municipality to expand their social, aid programs. First of all, the education system
must be improved. Schools should be able to receive more funds to improve their facilities, hire more teachers, and amend their schedules so that more students can receive good education. Trainings for teachers are also vital for developing their responsibilities and sense of duty. Second, the government should try to create more job opportunities. It is often considered that in order to find a "real" job, one has to go to the big cities like Salvador or São Paulo. However, this is a big disadvantage for the mother cities, because sending young people away will result in the
lack of resources left in the small cities. This signifies that the government should promote influx of projects, capital and corporations
into the small cities in rural areas, such as Quijingue. Lastly, the municipality should also guarantee easier excess to information for all people. "Knowledge is Power", proper information not only can motivate young people, it can also create new ideas.
However, the problem of young generation is not only the responsibility of the government or municipality. NGOs and social organizations also ought to take certain responsibilities in resolving the problem.

The role of the NGOs and social organizations should be to try to change the perceptions of the young generation. Through various
projects, events or campaigns, organizations can give young generations new expectations and motives of life.
This is where we, the Poverty Fighters, come into the picture. The Fight Poverty Project, along with Humana's Community Developement Project is trying to change and develop people's life and cognition in various ways. After spending more than a month in the community of Laguo da Barra, I have realized that what we ought to do here as
volunteers is not just building latrines, planting trees and giving English classes.
More importantly, we should try to bring about a turnover in perception. In order to do this, we should fully utilize our various
experiences and skills that we already have Tell and show the people about our experiences, let them know that there is a bigger world out there, and try to give them new expectations and desires for their own
future. I realized that we ourselves may not be the perfect role model for them, but we can always show them about our own role models
that led us to Brazil. I hope the seeds of hope I am planting now will bear fruitful results in the near future.

Jennifer, Korea