Starting over is a nightmare for most ex-cons, but Wanderley talks eagerly and fearlessly about the prospect of getting out. “We have 23 tunes copyrighted and a CD in the works,” he says as he clicks through the Missionarios home page. (Don’t bother trying to look it up; it’s not accessible outside the walls of Lemos.) His confidence stems from the band’s success, but also from the highly marketable computer skills he learned in prison.
Wanderley is one of thousands of Brazilians who are reaping the benefits of an unusual computer school for the down-and-out. Since 1995, the Center for the Democratization of Computer Science, or CDI in Portuguese, has spawned 208 “Computer and Citizenship Schools” in 17 Brazilian states. On any given day, poor youths and adults can be found writing with Word 2000, doodling with Corel Draw, building charts with Excel or surfing the Web. Many of them learn a smattering of the basics and then move on. Some master the finer arts of computer programming. Hundreds have become instructors in new CDI schools. The school’s 60,000 present and former students are a diverse lot. Many come from favelas in the big cities; some are landless peasants. They include the partially blind, psychiatric patients, prostitutes and prisoners. One village school inspired the Guarani Indians to add new words to their vocabulary: ayu ryrurive, the box that accumulates knowledge. The computer mouse they call anguja, or rat.
The person who set all this in motion is Rodrigo Baggio, CDI’s 31-year-old founder, director and visionary. In his chinos and lace-up suede shoes, a computer bag over one shoulder and a mobile phone clipped to his belt, he looks like any other overachieving techie, but he doesn’t talk like one. “The computer is more than a machine,” he says. “It’s a tool that can turn poor and underprivileged peopleinto true citizens.” From dorm rooms to Davos, it is fashionable to talk about those on the far side of the digital divide–the underprivileged who have no access to computers and the skills they confer. Baggio has arguably done more about it than anybody else.
The son of a successful IBM executive, Baggio rejected the traditional path of a member of Rio’s elite. As a teenager he volunteered at a home for street kids. In college he quickly grew bored with his studies but nurtured a boyhood passion for computers. He dropped out of Rio’s Federal University in his sophomore year, went to work as a computer consultant and founded Computers for All, a campaign to get companies to donate used computers to poor communities. In 1994 he began teaching computer science part time at Santo Inacio, a classy private school in Rio. Then one day a volunteer in his campaign suggested holding classes in computer basics for poor kids in Dona Marta, a sprawling favela that shared the mountainside with the private school. His friends thought he was crazy–the poor need food, not technology, they told him–but Baggio was undeterred. He persuaded the big clothing store C&A to pony up five personal computers based on the 386 chip, the latest model at the time. The Roman Catholic Church offered a classroom, a local community organization was put in charge of operations, and Baggio climbed the steep hill three days a week to give lessons. By March 1995, the first class had graduated. Six students agreed to stay on as teachers. Baggio called a press conference to announce the new school. To his surprise, radio and TV crews and reporters from 11 local newspapers showed up.
Once word was out, community groups from other poor neighborhoods began to seek out Baggio. A far cry from the paternalistic handouts that characterize many government-run programs for the poor, each CDI school is run locally and is even allowed to charge modest tuition. This formula frees Baggio to devote himself to what he does best: persuading corporations to donate equipment and funds. He has enlisted Xerox, Swiss cosmetics giant Avina and the World Bank as CDI’s “partners” (he doesn’t like to call them sponsors). The Brazilian government development bank BNDES kicked in $425,000 last year. Bill Gates has given $4.5 million worth of Microsoft software. In 1999 Baggio signed a deal with IBM, a former client, in which Big Blue donates obsolete computers it would otherwise discard. “The First World’s technological junk is treasure for us,” he says. On a speaking gig in Japan he persuaded his hosts to send old computers to Brazil on the Peace Boat, a floating NGO that ferries socially conscious Japanese to needy countries around the world.
Latin America could certainly use some of this discarded treasure. As recently as the mid-1990s, few people on the continent, rich or poor, owned a computer, and fewer than a million had access to the Web. Things have changed dramatically: now 35 million Latin Americans own PCs and 20 million use the Internet. The poor have largely been left out of this trend. In Brazil, for instance, 72 percent of the 7.7 million Internet users are from the wealthiest fifth of society, but only 8 percent come from the poorest fifth. Baggio’s schools are no panacea, but no other program holds as much promise for bridging this gap. “This is not just another new school or a computer clinic,” says William Drayton, director of Ashoka, a Virginia-based foundation dedicated to backing social entrepreneurs. “This is an idea that can change the way we think about the digital divide.” Indeed, Baggio’s schools have begun to spread beyond Brazil to Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico and even Japan (box). With help from Starmedia, the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank, Baggio plans to expand to the rest of Latin America and the Philippines.
Nowhere has the impact of Baggio’s schools been greater than in the favela. Julio Otoni is a typical urban slum: a jumble of makeshift homes shoehorned between wealthy mountainside neighborhoods. A few years ago the big event at the community center was the monthly “funk ball,” where teenagers danced to hip-hop, funk and rap music. The first donated computers–dusty Pentium I’s and 486s–arrived in the summer of 1999. Hardly cutting edge, but that doesn’t bother the little tykes in rubber sandals and soccer jerseys who stream into this CDI school to learn how to do a cold boot or run a Boolean search. “We start teaching 4-year-olds and move right on up to adults,” says Rita de Cassia Carvalho, the school director. “All of a sudden everybody wants to learn about computers here.”
This kind of opportunity is changing people’s lives. Dona Detinha left school in the third grade to work as a housemaid. When she enrolled at the Julio Otoni school, she was illiterate. The mouse and the world of screen icons were baffling, but sitting in front of the computer she eventually learned to read and write. Now she uses an ancient 386 computer at home to print greeting cards and fliers for her business–making sweets for parties of rich Cariocas, as Rio’s residents are called. On a good month, she pulls in about $300, twice the minimum wage.
Two years ago, 17-year-old Quezia Santana spent her days hawking soft drinks on the street. By night, she slept on the pavement under the Paulo de Frontem overpass. One day she’d had enough, checked herself into a home for abandoned kids and began attending one of Baggio’s computer schools. Six months later a Rio de Janeiro portal, Globo.com, hired her to teach computer basics to underprivileged kids. “I guess you could say the computer helped me get straightened out,” she says. One day, as she was about to enter the computer school, only a block from the overpass where she used to sleep, a security guard recognized her. “Don’t take me wrong, but aren’t you the same girl who…” He didn’t even finish the question. “Yeah,” Santana shot back. “That’s me.” And then she smiled and just walked through the glass door.
