I feel delighted to be among so many thought leaders from twenty countries to share ideas and experiences in order to create new strategies of family support and community development. I do hope we can structure a strong multinational network to face our similar challenges in different social and cultural contexts.

First of all, let me present some basic information about Brazil: we have a population of 180 million people unevenly distributed in 5.3 million square miles; life expectancy is around 70 years; infant mortality, 36/1000; fertility rate, 2.18. As far as age groups are concerned, we have 30% from 0 to 14; 64% from 15 to 64; and 6% are 65 years old or more. In 2002, our minimum wage is approximately US$ 85: to give a broad idea of our social inequality, we have 27% of the population earning from ½ to 2 minimum wages per month and only 2% earning more than 20 times this amount. At the moment, the unemployment rate is 6% and we still have 12% of illiteracy. Although Portuguese is the only official language, we have a significant regional diversity resulting in different aspects of our cultural identity. Our biggest challenges are to expand the scope of our partnership among government, NGOs, and society in general in order to achieve more social justice, more resources to invest in education, health, and social security, to fight corruption that is still so widespread (from policemen to politicians), and to create a culture of peace, since violence is now considered a serious problem of public health.

In a country with so much diversity, it is essential to devise different approaches to family support and community development. One of my areas of interest is to better understand the existence of low-violence communities near violent cities. In my activities as a lecturer and an ecotourist I travel extensively all over Brazil and I have been in many places where policemen have almost no work to do: solidarity and social control are strong, everybody knows everyone, and
antisocial acts are considered shameful. Nevertheless, even in the presence of such an efficient social control, there is a significant degree of domestic violence and alcoholism.

There are some basic questions that guide both my personal and professional life: How to contribute to create a culture of peace? How to contribute to enlarge solidarity networks? How to contribute to the formation of a new generation of non-violent and solidary children and teenagers? My work as a psychotherapist in private practice (seeing high-income families) and as a volunteer in social projects (working with low-income families and communities) has helped me to honor the
wisdom of children and teenagers, and to recognize the positive influence they may have on their families and communities.

One example of “the power of young people” is a project of the INPA (National Institute for Research in Amazonia) with children from 10 to 14 years old who were trained in environmental education and are making a real “revolution” in their surroundings. Another example is the CDI (Committee for Democracy and Information Technology) which offers training to teenagers and enable many of them to convey their new knowledge to thousands of other kids in more than 300 low-income communities, most of them dominated by the drug dealers. These experiences were the basic sources of inspiration for two of my books which are recommended as reading material for children from 10 to 14. I
created stories based on real projects in order to stimulate thinking and action around solidarity networks and sustainable development programs for low-income communities. I am very happy to know that, in many schools, children and teenagers felt stimulated to volunteer in social projects and even to devise their own!

In the NGOs I’m directly involved with, either as a volunteer consultant or in the board of directors, there are meaningful lines of action in family support and community development: in the Pastoral da Criança, a network of 140,000 volunteers offers guidance to one million families with children from 0 to 6 in more than 3,000 low-income communities all
over Brazil, and encourages income-generation projects by means of low-interest loans; the Cruzada do Menor is an NGO that strongly regards families as partners in providing good care for children in the nurseries, offering professional training for teenagers to prepare them for the work market, and stimulating the interaction between young children and the elders who are also included in their projects; the ABTH (the Brazilian association which developed from “Terre des Hommes” in Switzerland), contributes to expand the “culture of adoption” to include adoption of older children, stimulates the creation of a large network of adoptive families all over the country to share their experiences and also has a program to empower multiproblem families, encouraging them to reintegrate their children who are living in thestreets.

My hope is that we can all become peace builders in our everyday life, in the three dimensions of the concept of peace (inner peace, interpersonal peace and peace with the environment), strengthening our networks in order to achieve the ultimate goal: the globalization of solidarity, compassion, and love.

* This paper has been presented in the thought leaders meeting at the International Conference of Family Support America, in Chicago, April 2002.