João Pessoa: You Mayor in Schools (Você Prefeito nas Escolas)

Você Prefeito nas Escolas consisted of developing a new practice in the city of João Pessoa (Paraíba, Brazil), whereby children and teenagers were able to vote in the demand elections, a democratic tool in which only adults could participate. This new audience was able to vote, exercising their participatory citizenship, an innovative element within democratic practices in Brazil, thus massively strengthening the protagonism of children, teenagers and young people in our city.

The programme went further, not only including this group in the electoral process, but also creating a new phase in which dialogue circles were held on everyday topics, in which the protagonists chose the topic they would like to discuss, such as: culture of peace, racism, religious intolerance, youth protagonism, the statute for children and adolescents, self-knowledge, coexistence and respect were the topics covered and the facilitators of each topic were the most diverse. This phase was concluded satisfactorily, the feedback was very positive, the public praised it and asked for the project to return with new topics. The next phase of the You Mayor in Schools project will be carried out in the second half of 2024, with the meeting of the ‘Young Manager’. Two protagonists will be chosen from each school included in the project and they will have a different experience: they will spend the day with the mayor of the city and will see for themselves how public management works.

Youth protagonism is a way of recognising that the participation of children and adolescents can generate decisive changes in the social, environmental, cultural and political reality in which they find themselves. In this sense, participation for adolescents means getting involved in processes of discussion, decision, design and execution of actions, with the aim of developing their creative potential and transformative power through their involvement in solving real problems.

Therefore, the You Mayor in Schools programme, through the João Pessoa City Council and the Executive Secretariat for Popular Participation in particular, which created the programme, has innovated in the youth protagonism sector, inserting a group whose rights were limited and expanded, giving democratic participation a turn and changing the paradigm of this public, thus exercising citizenship and collective construction, helping to make decisions by voting on the public policy that is needed and making the city more democratic.