“Imagina na Copa!”, loosely translated as “Imagine it during the World Cup!” is a phrase that has been oft-repeated in Brazil in the last year or two. For most of its lifespan, it has been used to refer to something that doesn’t work the way it should or to something that will worsen (such as traffic congestion) during a mega-event such as the World Cup. But what if the phrase was transformed into a force for good? That’s the hope of the site Imagina na Copa which is posting, week by week, 75 stories of how young people are improving their own surroundings.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZfvxZ30pJ4]“Every week, we’re going to post stories of young people that are transforming the country for the better. These stories will serve as inspiration and will show that it’s possible to make a difference with the resources that we have. The idea here is also to facilitate the interaction between the visitors to the site and the young people behind the initiatives.”
The site will also sponsor workshops for up to 25 young people in the 12 Brazilian host cities. The objective being to help those interested to better understand the project and plan their own involvement. By combining theory, design and practice, the team behind the site hope to generate interest as well as new ideas.
As part of week 9, the story revolves around two social entrepreneurs who are transforming their city of Porto Alegre. They decided the 5,000 bus stops in Porto Alegre needed some sort of sign that indicated which bus routes passed by that location. The way they went about it was to create large stickers with white space where bus riders themselves could write in the bus routes. The collaborative effort was vandalized more than once and now the governmental entity in charge of transportation in the city is working in conjunction with the entrepreneurs to implement the project in the best way possible.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sY49CFmCHY]If you’d like to see the other 8 stories (thus far) from Imagina na Copa, you can do so on their site or via their Youtube channel.
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