Hello.
Much pleasure. I’m the street.
Most people believe that living on the street is an option,
but it is often a difficulty to find another way.
In the winter of 2015, I had a horrible flu.
I coughed a lot, those things that knock you down.
I was alone at home, I went down, I live in an apartment in Bom Fim,
I went to buy medicine and orange juice.
When I came back, I met a homeless, who is my neighbor,
with the same symptoms!
I was shocked and said, “Guys, we’re the same people.”
And it’s not: “Oh, how we are the same”, no, really!
I hit something in there and I said,
“It is impossible for us to continue in this process without seeing.”
Here come our “new looks”, right?
I shared my juice with him and I started, really, to have an inner awakening.
And in this awakening, I began to meditate, to think.
And when you begin to look into yourself,
you see the other more clearly,
you begin to see that it is not your navel.
And in that, one day, in a social network, that was November 2015,
I met a page of a guy named Carlos Lacerda,
which is in the interior of Bahia.
He created the “Solidary Bath”.
At the time, it was a dawn, I had a compulsive crisis of crying,
and said, “Guys, that’s it!
That’s what I want to bring to Porto Alegre! That’s part of my story! “
It hit the heart.
The other morning, I called him and asked,
“Claudio, send me, how do I do this drawing, how is it?”
He had nothing very written, so just a few basic explanations.
Then I started playing with that sensation.
With that, I had a lot of goodwill and no penny.
I wrote the project,
in February 2016 the project was ready.
Then I started to create a “crowdfunding”, right, there you have to find the money.
Three friends, who were the only ones who believed in the project,
because everyone thought it was crazy: “Are you going to rub the homeless people?”
In fact, when it had this beginning,
Mara, Vera and Tati were the ones who went out with me,
Because we went to interview, ask them.
if they really wanted an easier place to use the bath.
At the end of March 2016, I said, “There, it will not!”
Because the disbelief was too great,
we were in a super-disturbed moment of the country,
so I said, “Look, I need help,” and two other women appeared:
Marcia and Marilei, who are like this …
Thanks to them until now, they were the ones who moved, in fact,
with the process to end the solidarity bath.
We got R $ 20.4 thousand, we needed R $ 20 thousand.
So people, in three months, six half-crazy women, believing an idea,
they managed to make something come true.
It is the question of action: looking, believing and doing.
The first bath … tomorrow a year ago!
The first bath was June 11, 2016!
(Applause)
Our idea was to make a day before Valentine’s Day,
to be a fair day of love; love of justice and social inclusion.
The bath, I did not say how it is,
is an adapted tow, with shower of both sides, masculine and feminine.
Junker hot shower, better than in my house, I can guarantee!
We go to a place of great movement of people,
we give clothes, snacks, toiletries, toothpaste and toothbrush …
The idea is for them to see each other.
The great bath process,
the idea of Claudio, who is the “father” of all the baths of Brazil, is this:
let them look at each other!
We put a mirror, then there.
The idea is that there are more than a thousand people who looked at each other in the mirror and thought,
“How beautiful I am, how good I am.”
The phrase we hear the most is: “Now I am people, now I can!”
“Now I’m fine.”
It is to look, yes.
This was the first bath, eight people. We have had up to 60 people attended.
What the bath brought was visibility.
That is, these people always existed,
they were in the ghettos, under the bridges, over the viaducts,
They’ve always been around.
It’s just that we pretended we did not see it, really;
Every day we see their bodies dirty, ignored and abandoned.
I see and I’m sure everyone sees it and we think about it.
And we have a very serious question that is the statistical question,
because we have no idea how much of it.
Last year, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS,
made, contracted by the FASC,
the Foundation of Social Assistance of the Municipality of Porto Alegre,
a study with the homeless.
We have 2,115 residents in street situations,
355 vacancies in shelters.
The account does not close!
And we have 1,700 people who sleep in the open air,
or hidden in some hole every day.
There are four auditoriums that neither this one, of people sleeping in the street.
And the big question, let’s not say, “Oh, the public power has to solve.”
What public power, people? Look at the country where we are!
Our proposal is for us, as civil society, to agree,
wake up to this process!
You can not deny it, pretend it’s not happening. Yes it is!
And the big question is, is it possible.
Ah, on the day of the bath, it was seven degrees, as it was this morning,
and we had a great visibility;
people really began to believe!
And in these statistics, over the last five years,
the street population in Porto Alegre grew 57%.
It’s rampant! We have 10, 11% growth per year.
And it’s not like that, “for them.” No, it’s for us!
The city is getting heavier, people are getting sadder.
And the big question: do not just look.
It’s a smile, is to consider them as part of the process.
What we hear the most is, “Get this guy out the door of my building.”
“I have nothing to give you.”
And here it comes.
It is not giving anything.
Do not give empathy, which is what Ana has so much talked about in other TEDx.
It is not to see them as part of our process.
We talk to them; The bath has a talking process.
We do not treat them like poor people; people treat like people like us.
Because they are people like us.
And we found out that a part of them are effective workers.
They pick up cans, recyclable waste,
they wash cars or they are street vendors.
They have a job, that’s 30%, 40% of the population share.
And it has the drugs issue.
We heard something very serious:
a “xis” costs $ 10 and kills hunger for two hours.
A crack rock costs $ 5, and you do not think of food for six hours.
Then the hunger, the cold, the street situation dehumanize them completely.
How can you expect someone to come in, pick them up, and solve the problem?
The problem is ours as well as civil society.
It is not to charge others not.
When you give a smile to the guy and treat him better,
He’ll treat you better on the street.
There you go. They are just like us.
In the shower, we have the part of the brushing and what I want to show you:
they see each other.
We give food, snacks, toiletries, and talk.
Then they stop, have coffee, and spend four hours listening to them.
But not from the past, but from what they think and want to be.
They also see, they also look to the future, people.
We should look at the future, perhaps even as they,
because they still have the question of hope.
The moment they leave, they have hope.
I want you to know your Valdir!
Your Valdir is a job that we did
in the Solidarity Bathroom with the Action Street Calabria,
which is an entity, an NGO, which deals with the [street] residents,
but they did not get so much access to them because they were more suspicious.
Since we are not an NGO, we are a crowd of civil society,
non-profit, or religious, or political,
we are trying to do good for the good, as Claudio Lacerda says,
we have no judgment of value or judgment,
we do not impose conditions, we do not have to do anything.
You get there, you want to take a shower, you want to eat, that’s fine, no problem.
This was the first bath of Seu Valdir,
if you saw the state of those jeans, you have no idea what it was.
It came out so hard, the trash.
Then he came and people were talking
and trying to understand who he was.
This is your Valdir in the second bath;
in the third shower we have already been able to cut our hair.
We sometimes take hairdressers, not always,
who is a hairdresser and wants to help us …
But once in a while a hairdresser appears and we cut our hair, he shaved.
Here he was already beginning to think about going home;
because it is a return, too, to the process …
Here he is when he visited us, already showered in the new house
and this is the house of your Valdir.
The big question that we noticed,
and that’s what we call people,
and we’re actually talking about new looks, it’s:
people need, what we notice we do not have,
no emotional or psychological work when they leave the streets.
And it’s not a thing: “Ah, you have to go to a specialized person.”
No, we have a hard time connecting with them.
So, as a civil society, if we start looking at them
and start to worry, really:
What can we do on a day to day basis to help them?
Several people “adopt” a person in a street situation.
Detail: The term politically correct is people on the street.
But when you look, I live with them, they are homeless people, yes, people.
There is no place for them to live.
The point is: you earn a minimum wage, you have no schooling,
Can not you get a better job, where you live?
Because to be a citizen, you must have an address, RG, CPF and work permit.
Pro ordinary citizen is hard to get job …
So the big question is: how do we, as civil society,
speaking of everything that the personnel spoke before here in the TEDx,
how are we going to find specific solutions to this.
As the science girl said,
like dyslexia girl,
as everyone is talking about, that is, we are part of our internal process.
One day we decided to give them a voice.
And they told us.
He wrote, “I want to stop drugs.”
This boy came and asked, “I want,” we heard, actually.
There you have to find high places to put all these people in a street situation,
to have a treatment.
We discovered creativity.
And we discovered poetry.
A poet in the middle of the street.
This is Carine Brandão.
I wanted to talk to you, before telling Carine a little bit more,
that in those 12 months, we were able to take them or send them back to the family
or go home or go to hospital, 12 people.
So it would be like that, one person a month.
Guys, we’re half a dozen half-crazy women,
now even men came to help.
What if they had more like us?
Ah yes. I want to share with you the poetry of Carine.
She wrote that day, sitting, in that photo you see.
“Freedom of expression is not a role at hand,
but the power of the voice in action.
Costs, dramas, tears, pain
of a poor lady behind her son,
which is lost in the world.
In this dirty world,
the rich have a misconception about the homeless.
By also being human and with heart,
We are all the same.
Just like you have a car and a mansion.
We all have dreams and desires,
we just do not have a house or car like you do.
But take one day out of your luxurious lives.
and come and talk to us.
And so you will understand and get to know us better.
Pleasure. I’m the street.
And everyone’s hope. “
Carine Brandão, a former resident in a street situation, from the Viaduct of Borges de Medeiros.
(Applause)
Much pleasure!
Now I’m not the street.
Now we are all of us.
(Applause) (Live)
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