Dandara Brasil Project

According to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals (Antra), 90% of the Brazilian transgender population has already resorted to prostitution at least once in their lives. And, as the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (Unaids) pointed in 2017, the HIV epidemic is spreading disproportionately in Brazil. Transvestites and transsexual women are the subgroup most affected: about 40% of them live with the virus in São Paulo, while in the general Brazilian population this index is 100 times lower.

Our objective is to assist these people by: creating good resumes; preparing them to job interviews, through an online course with subject matter experts; and directing them to LGBTQ+ friendly companies/businesses in their regions, so they can stop working in this dangerous environment.

To make this an international project, we want to build connections with people outside Brazil that are already envolved somehow in their communities with this issue.

Here are some statistics about prostitution in a global scale, extracted from a research titled as "Prostitution is Sexual Violence", conducted by Melissa Farley, a PhD in Counseling Psychology (University of Iowa, 1973): 70% to 95% of people who are in prostitution were physically assaulted during their work shift; 75% of them lived on the street at some point in their lives; 85% to 95% want to escape, but have no other options for survival.

In addition, according to an academic article by the PhD researcher Andreza do Socorro Pantoja de Oliveira Smith, entitled "Trafficking in Transvestites and Transsexuals for Sexual Exploitation: Gender as a Category of Analysis and Violation of Human Rights", it is estimated that somewhere around 7,000 Brazilian trans women are exposed to traffic conditions for sexual exploitation worldwide.

And because of all this information above (and many others), the transgender population is being drastically reduced in Brazil. Depression is present in 60% of them (data from The Lancet Magazine) and their life expectancy is only 35 YEARS OLD (data from Antra), which is super lower if compared to the general Brazilian index (76 years old).

Here are the fundamental steps:

1) Mini-selective process through the internet;

2) Six transgender women will be selected in each cycle (8 weeks);

3) First week: knowing them better = background, type of job they want/can work and scholarity;

Second week - Fifth week (mentees): online course = classes, lectures and materials with subject matter experts to prepare them to the current job market and the job interviews (32-hour workload, with a certificate from Projeto Dandara Brasil).

The course will have 4 main subjects: Technology, Costumer Service, Finances and Oratory. We will put this course in their curriculum, so it can have something different and good, since the majority of them will probably do not have a good school background (if any);

Second week - Fifth week (staff) = searching for LGBTQ+ friendly companies/businesses in their region that needs an employee and talk with them about the organization standards for trans people;

Sixth week: distribute resumes in the chosen organizations;

Seventh - eighth week: job interviews*;

4) End of the cycle and divulgation of new cycle application.

*if necessary, we will help them with more formal clothes for the job interview, if they do not have.

Target public: Brazilian transgender women, mainly between 18 and 35 years old. Look at the following information about them: 0.02% of them are in the university; 72% didn't finish high school; school dropout occurs, on average, at 13 years old; 3/4 of them have already suffered verbal aggression at school; they live in the country that kills trans people the most (40% of all the murders accounted).

All team members took some online courses about the LGBTQ+ community, we learned better how to behave with them and some nomenclatures very necessary, even for us that are also LGBTQ+ people.

We are engaging people through social media: Instagram and LinkedIn. We are posting every week about a data/statistic, testimony of violence, personal story, activists in the movement, more about our project etc.4

And to have more followers, we are using some money that we received from Peace First (a worldwide NGO) to boost our posts and making some other things to divulgate more our initiative.

With the posts and Instagram stories, we are helping the trans community to have more recognition and the Brazilian population can be, somehow, better informed about these issues and, then, maybe transphobia indexes will be lower.

We exist to support marginalized population access good job opportunities, by helping them through the internet to be prepared for the labor market. In our course, we will talk about intrinsic issues nowadays: the importance of technology, their role in the Brazilian economical scenario, possible solutions of entrepreneurial initiatives they can develop if they are not accepted in any job opportunity, and how they can continue improving the skills we will teach them during the program.

We want them to access good salaries in good works, without any risk, making them have financial security and never go back to prostitution.

During the 2020 Youth Ambassadors Program, promoted by the U.S. State Department, where this social impact initiative was born, Matheus and I started thinking about projects similar/equal to ours in Brazil. We spent several days searching and nothing, because the truth is: until today, we haven't seen any other with the same objective as ours.

We have already seen online platforms where trans people can register their resumes, for job opportunities in companies that support the LGBTQ+ cause, but no initiative that helps these people the way we help.
What we believe to be innovative in our project is precisely this: we not only reveal job opportunities in organizations, but also provide all the support so that our mentee has a chance of getting a job. We developed a course, which despite not being widely recognized, brings extremely necessary knowledge and it is capable of significantly changing the result of a job interview and the person's performance in the labor environment in the company.

Furthermore, we exist to make Brazilian people aware of the trans issue and hopefully they will stop judging and pointing the finger in the transvestite, because they will know that life was not easy for them.

TRANS LIVES MATTER!

Our project would not exist without technology. It is completely online, because we still do not have enough money to have a presence version of it and we can also reach more people in our country.

We will use platforms such as Instagram, Gmail, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Youtube, Google Meet and many others to maintain contact with our mentees, the companies and the general public in Brazil.

And about the course, they will learn about 4.0 Industry, how they can use technology in their favor and some basic using knowledge in Microsoft Office.

By helping the trans female population to get out of prostitution, we can also possibly reduce transphobia practiced in our country. In what way? People tend to associate prostitution with something bad, nobody cares or respects a prostitute.
Furthermore, with our posts, we can increase the awareness of the Brazilian population about diversity and better educate them sexually, since our posts have a high educational and informative content.
We also want to reduce the rates of depression and suicide among the trans population and obviously, a good job, no Sexually Transmitted Diseases worries and a stable financial life can help a lot with this.
Lastly and most importantly, we want to honor the name of Dandara dos Santos (our great inspiration for the creation of the project) and show everyone that her death was not in vain: she is actually a seed, which gave birth to this wonderful project which, in one way or another, seeks to help the so forgotten and invisible population that Dandara once belonged to.

In July, it will happen the beginning of the first cycle. We aim to help 36 transgender women in the first year. If everything occurs well, our objective is to increase staff and help until 120 trans women/year, so in five years, our initiative will help approximately 500 trans women get their formal job and leave sexual work in our country.

Recruite more staff (up to 4 people), so we can help more and increase our transforming power. Maybe we will not change millions of lives, since the transgender community in Brazil isn't that big according data, but we will try very hard to help as many people as we can, with the best quality of service we are able to provide;

Reach 600 followers on Instagram until the end of July 2020;

Reach 3,000 followers on Instagram until the end of the year;

Gain more financial support from NGOs and competitions of social entrepreneurship;

Partner with large companies.

Financial sustainability. For the time being, we have received a mini-grant from an international NGO to boost and start the project, but we do not know how we will achieve good financial sustainability after the money is over. We hope to make good connections and contacts, so they can support us.

We received around 1,200 Brazilian Reais ($250.00 U.S. Dollars) from Peace First and we intend to use it basically in 3 actions, in this first semester:

1. Boost our posts on Instagram, through sortitions and digital marketing (60% of the total);
2. To help financially mentors with extreme financial difficulties who do not have an internet connection at home to continue the program or who are unable to buy suitable clothes for the job interviews etc. (25% of the total);
3. Other expenses that may arise during the next six months (15% of the total).

Arthur Pereira Lima dos Reis (full-time staff) = Social Entrepreneurship Director. Role: Administration, Finances and Human Resources.

Matheus Coutinho da Silva (full-time staff) = Social Media & Communication Director. Role: Marketing, Design and Public Affairs.

Naiara Braga (part-time staff) = Social Inclusion Director: will participate only during the mini-selective process to review applications, conduct interviews and choose participants for each cycle.

We all are from the LGBTQ+ community and we have always been participating in our community in social impact initiatives, but we have never created any.

Arthur is an undergraduate student in Geography at the State University of Campinas, Matheus is in the process of applying to universities abroad and Naiara is already studying Political Sciences in the university.

All of us participated in the 2020 Youth Ambassadors Program, totally funded by the U.S. State Department, designed for high schoolers from the most disadvantaged socioeconomic strata. The main objective is to increase the desire of undertake socially in youth.

In a Yale summer program, Arthur developed a research paper about "Transphobia in the Philippines" and, since then, his passion to help the transgender community just incresed.

Matheus participated in the Latin American Leadership Academy and this program changed his life. He wants to continue helping underprivileged people and make them ascend socially.

We may look like just random young people who want to change the world, but in truth we believe that we will change it. Youth can change!

Peace First is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young people around the world to become powerful peacemakers. They are helping us with financial support and with online tools to improve our initiative, besides a mentorship.

We provide the mentorship and the online course to prepare them better for the job market, through online platforms. They want this because it is a differential in their resume, and they need this because a lot of them probably do not have a good scholarity, so this course can help them get a good job.

Applying to programs that can help us, such as MIT 2020 Global Challenges, with grants and donations.

After some successful cycles, we want to build strong relations with some companies, so they can help us with money to maintain the project and we can provide them good employees.

Everybody that is envolved in the project is low income, so we already sell products (like brigadeiros and candies) in our universities and neighbourhoods to help our families. Then, we just CANNOT get this money to invest in our social project, even we really want that.