Citizenship Knows No Age: Children's Participation in the Governance and Municipal Budget of Barra Mansa, Brazil

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 15(2), 2005 Citizenship Knows No Age: Children’s Participation in the Governance and Municipal Budget of Barra Mansa, Brazil Eliana Guerra Brazilian NGO Cearah Periferia and Agora XXI Fortaleza, Brazil Citation: Guerra, Eliana. (2005). “Citizenship Knows No Age: Children’s Participation in the Governance and Municipal Budget of Barra Mansa, Brazil.” Children, Youth and Environments 15(2): 151-168. Comment on This Article Abstract This paper describes the development of a children’s participatory budget council in the city of Barra Mansa (Brazil), to which 18 boys and 18 girls are elected by their peers to ensure that the municipal council addresses their needs and priorities. This council determines how a proportion of the municipal budget (equivalent to around US$ 125,000 a year) is spent on addressing children’s priorities, and its child councilors are also involved in other aspects of government. Each year since 1998, more than 6,000 children have taken part in discussions and assemblies to elect their child councilors and discuss their own priorities. The elected children learn how to represent their peers within democratic structures, to prioritize based on available resources, and then to develop projects within the complex and often slow political and bureaucratic process of city governance. This process has extended to children the concept of participatory budgeting that is now widely used in Brazil for increasing citizen involvement in urban governance. It is encouraging similar innovations in other cities in Latin America, as the example becomes better known and as more people visit Barra Mansa. Keywords: Brazil, participatory budgeting, governance© 2005 Children, Youth and Environments Citizenship Knows No Age: Children’s Participation in the Governance… 152 Introduction Barra Mansa is a city of 170,000 located in the state of Rio de Janeiro, on the axis linking Brazil’s two largest cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Like neighboring Volta Redonda, Barra Mansa is an industrial city. Industries support some 15,000 jobs and the main sectors are metallurgical/ steel and food processing, with two-thirds of the industrial employment being small and microenterprises . Agriculture and livestock in the areas around the city are important for supplying the city and for providing employment in abattoirs, in milk production and in food-processing industries. The children’s participatory budget council (CPBC) in Barra Mansa is a special project established in 1998, which aims to foster citizenship among children and teenagers aged between nine and 15, drawing on the experience with participatory budgeting by city and municipal councils in Brazil.1 Children elect their peers to a children’s council, which has at its disposal a small portion of the municipal budget equivalent to about US$125,000,2 for use on the priorities determined by this council (Brazilian Institute for Municipal Administration 2000). The project, established through a municipal law and implemented by the city council under the direct responsibility of the mayor’s office, is part of a broader action plan developed by Barra Mansa city council, which aims to promote and institutionalize the effective participation of children, drawing in all age groups, including teenagers, both to encourage their civic engagement and to recognize their role and importance as both individuals and citizens (Urban Management Programme-Latin America and Caribbean 2000). It is supported by the Municipal Secretariat of Education through school teachers and head teachers, neighborhood residents’ associations, church groups, and delegates and councilors of the adult participatory budget council. Participatory management councils are highlighted in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution as “...one of the principal tools of public participation for the reorientation of public management” (IBAM 2000). Integrating public participation into municipal budgeting is a process that is being developed by a number of city councils in Brazil which, like Barra Mansa, consider participatory budgets to be “...a democratic way of administering public funds… [as] it is public money, the budget is made public, so the planning process should also be public” (UMP-LAC 2000). The participatory budget councils are seen as real fora for the practice of citizenship and public participation in defining and accompanying the implementation of public policies. Working with public budgets3 enables a range of issues to be addressed...