Ruma

Ruma is a hybrid education hub created to foster sustainable development in the Northeast of Brazil, making international agendas and social impact markets acessible to youth leaders from marginalized communities.

The central problem identified is the lack of support for sustainable youth leadership development from social minorities, especially in the northeastern region of Brazil. According to a statistical survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the Northeast concentrates 47.9% of poverty in Brazil. The background behind this problem is the socioeconomic inequalities that segregate and hinder exchange possibilities between the regions of Brazil, impacting the development and sustainability indicators of the region.

Thus, there is less access to education for young people in the Northeast (according to the Atlas of Youth, it corresponds to 26% of the country's youth), especially people belonging to one or more minority groups, such as women, black people, and the LGBT+ community from the lower classes. Furthermore, the lack of educational infrastructure for developing personal and professional skills in the technology and science sector diminishes the potential to foster sustainable and inclusive communities. When we fail to invest in the Northeast, we are failing to develop our country.

According to data from the Atlas of Youth, 24% of young Brazilians indicate that environment and sustainable development is a relevant topic to be discussed by society, on the same level as topics related to education and professional future (25%) and racism (25%). This highlights how interested our youth is in fundamental issues for our society, through this, Ruma aims to build more discussion and innovation spaces for the northeastern youth that haven’t enjoyed opportunities or had no support.

Ruma is an initiative with the goal of fostering sustainable and inclusive communities through the activism of young minorities in Brazil’s northeast region. Using active learning methodologies and the Sustainable Development Goals, we induce the social awakening of young people to create effective positive change. Providing a simple and accessible virtual platform, we will centralize opportunities, training, and materials while mapping the existing socio-environmental impact in the region.

We have three main operations currently:

Awareness: free activities awakening the interest of youth for solving problems s in their communities with sustainability good practices and offering protagonist spaces.

Capacitation: affordable activities for young people interested in personalized capacitation focused on green jobs leadership skills, certifying young professionals in STEM areas.

Partnerships: We will offer a network for institutions interested in reaching, investing, and developing the youth audience in the Northeast region.

Brazil has a division into 5 geographical regions, which defines many decisions in the country: North, Northeast, Center-west, Southeast, and South. Despite the recognition of the greatness of Brazil's natural resources, the Northeast is historically affected by geographical and social challenges in the conservation of natural resources. 

The country is among the ten most unequal in the World Bank's ranking, impacting the region that holds almost 50% of the country's poverty according to the Brazilian Statistics Institute. Despite this, national policies have proven inefficient in dealing with water crises and preserving resources, such as the 2020 oil spill in the ocean and the lack of water assistance for smallholders, with current consequences on the local economic improvement dependent on fishing, agriculture, and tourism.

Consequently, the previous generations migrated to the Southeast in search of a better life and end up in unskilled jobs and suffering xenophobia. Despite that, the Northeastern youth has a big educational potential, but the region also faces a loss of young intellectual talents, who leave their roots toward opportunities in the South.

The target audience of more than 11 million young northeastern people between 16 at 29 years, will be benefited from accessing decision-making places to co-create solutions to solve socio-environmental problems. Consequently, by improving the local market through the investment in a new green economy, activism, and educational access, the northeast region will create its own innovation ecosystem based on its culture and natural resources lead by the youth leader's generation.

Ruma's team is composed of young people from the northeast region from one or more social minorities. Experiencing the loss of our dreams, we decided to come together so that other youth in our region wouldn't stop leading for lack of support, funding, or training. Furthermore, witnessing the destruction of the natural resources of our region made us seek collective and local intervention to preserve our territory.

Founder Sabrina Cabral has been part of several initiatives of the Fortaleza government, learning in practice the importance of investing in youth from vulnerable areas.

As a result of environmental with humanistic education, she discovered the relationship between social inequalities and lack of innovation to solve the current crises, especially in STEM degrees. Consequently, she perceived an interdisciplinary degree as the key to overcoming these barriers, but it is not a reality in Brazilian academia, diminishing the development of problem-solving youth leadership, mainly from vulnerable groups.

Mainly through the activities of the MIT Solv[ED], it was possible to model the solution by thinking about these experiences and the data and experiences of the last two years.

The project started in 2021. In 2021, with United People Global support, the first model was created in the Sustainability Leadership program, being awarded by Força Meninas with Change the World Like a Girl Award providing access to MIT Solv[ED] and two micro-grants. In the first exploratory grant, invested strengthening relations with Fortaleza’s projects, doing interviews with leaders, and volunteering in environmental activities. Moreover, interviewing 113 of 298 participants of Ruma’s activities with ten institutions.

Despite the focus on northeastern territory, the public from the Southeast (higher DHI in Brazil) in national activities exceeded the public from the northeast, leading to leadership and professional access. Furthermore, 45.54% of the participants are white people, demonstrating the consequences of the country's inequalities.

Nevertheless, 63.39% were women and 41.96% were in public education entirely, showing these minority groups' potential to reach new ones.

Based on this data, Ruma is ingressed in Digital Future Labs, a futurism hub for slams created by the UK Brazil Tech Hub from British Government to use technology and sustainability in territory development.

Uma plataforma que mapeia e capacita jovens para atuar nos novos mercados verdes a partir das necessidades das regiões onde vivem, tornando-se jovens referências em ativismo e impacto social. 

We are an emerging youth leadership initiative in Northeast Brazil that offers the best for our markets:

B2C - offering a safe space to create a collaborative and innovative community for youth embedded in public education and small social projects.

B2B - offering consulting, training, and partnerships with social organizations, NGOs, and governments interested in standing out by investing in racial, regional, and social diversity.

Our dierential is promoting green skills and rescuing the ancestry of the Northeastern culture, descending from the black and indigenous cultures of our territories. Moreover, our team is composed entirely of young people from these communities, who understand the Northeast and fight for their peers to build more sustainable and inclusive communities.

Our goal is to impact 500 new young people.

We will expand our in-person outreach to a new state in the Northeast region while strengthening our relationships with organizations and governments in the state where we were born.

In addition, we want to expand our network of partners in the Global South by participating in international 2023 agendas.

Our product is an educational methodology that can be applied online and offline to reach our audience.

Working on three fronts, we serve young people at different levels of leadership development. Using whatsapp and e-mail to communicate with our community, requiring low connectivity for access.

In 2021, Ruma has impacted 584 young Brazilians. We realized activities in all regions of the country, take the opportunity with young institutions that represent how interested the younger generation is in building bridges between regions. According to our data survey: 

• 65,1% of participants from the Northeast region;
• 18.2% of the participants from the Southeast region;
• 4.5% of the participants from the South region;
• 4.5% of the participants from the Midwest region.
• 0,4% of participants from the North region;
• 7,3 of participants have not indemnified region;

In 2022, we impact 50 young people only from North and Norteast with accompaniment during the year, promoting continuous progress in the insertion of these young people in the social impact market.

1° Financial. Our team is composed of 3 young low-income northeasterners and Brazilians. Consequently, to continue our work, we need to make the initiative sustainable financially, invest quality time and energy, ensuring our basic needs. In the last few months, we have invested in grants and scholarships opportunities, possibly affording the necessary expenses and equipment.

2° Social vulnerability. All the team is located in regions of social vulnerability, locations that do not have as much access to incubation programs with financial support, which hinders the process of innovation and development of our project, lacking support and visibility.

3° The country we live in is facing the consequences of negligence and lack of federal government support to climate crisis solutions, affecting the environmental initiative's implementation.

4° We need advice on legal issues to get more funding and formalize our project

5° We need more specialized people in certain areas like technology (a developer) to help us create our platform.

Força Meninas - Institutional support, acceleration of social projects, and access to the Solv[ED] community and other practitioners.

United People Global - Institutional support, access to training in sustainability and leadership skills, safe space for the development of Northeastern leaderships at the international level.

Municipal Government of Fortaleza - Financial support, access to skill development opportunities, institutional support for carrying out activities, social support.

Our main income is fundraising for social projects and initiatives.

Our next step is to move into B2B strategies to close partnerships with established companies, governments, and NGOs.

The proposal is to provide customized solutions for organizations that reside or operate in the Northeast region.

Our dierential is promoting green skills and rescuing the ancestry of the Northeastern culture, descending from the black and indigenous cultures of our territories. Moreover, our team is composed entirely of young people from these communities, who understand the Northeast and fight for their peers to build more sustainable and inclusive communities.

Our main income is fundraising for social projects and initiatives.

Our next step is to move into B2B strategies to close partnerships with established companies, governments, and NGOs.

The proposal is to provide customized solutions for organizations that reside or operate in the Northeast region. Among some of the services we offer are:

- promoting selections for internships and trainee programs.
- elaboration of training programs with active methodologies
- diversity and inclusion consulting