Alessandra Orofino is a social activist from Brazil, a co-founder of extremely successful local project Meu Rio. Meu Rio is a network of socially engaged citizens of Rio de Janeiro that emerged in Alessandra visited Strelka this month to give a public talk covering her experience of starting campaigns and helping people unite around important local issues and bring about change using technology. She also talked extensively about four online tools created by Meu Rio β a volunteering platform Multitude, legislative bill-creating tool Legislando, monitoring tool De Guarda and a community engagement platform Pressure Cooker.
Inequality in cities. Our cities are increasingly becoming more and more unequal. The stereotypical vision of Latin America is that of a rural area with beautiful beaches, however in reality we are a predominantly urban continent. My hometown is one of the most unequal cities in the world β Rio de Janeiro. The Italian part of the family was really wealthy, so they lived in this big expensive house in Copacabana just by the beach.
That was, of course, before Copacabana became essentially all skyscrapers. I found it really crazy growing up in a city where these two worlds could coexist almost without overlapping. Brazilian Favela. Crisis of representation. One of the reasons for this inequality and many other social problems is an ongoing crisis of representation. Even in the most democratic regimes people have become increasingly disengaged from democratic institutions.
The turnout rates at mayoral elections, even the most open of them, are at a historical low. The example of Los Angeles is especially worrying: less than a quarter of all registered voters showed up at the recent mayoral elections there.
What is Meu Rio. We have built custom platforms for social activism such as Legislando, Pressure Cooker, Multitude and several others. A platform for everyone. Meu Rio toolkits and methodology are not elitist and inaccessible. It is something that has been taken up by people from all over the city. They know that if they mobilize, if they involve their family, their community and act together, they might actually get the change that they want. Often when they want to introduce a new bill, they just put it on the platform and let people participate in writing it.
