Good morning, I am Bruna from Brasil and I work at the ReCivitas NGO.
Our mission is investing in people in order to mould citizens.
I am here to tell you how we transformed and old, utopic idea
in an innovative social technology.
A simple political model, inexpensive and easily repeatable,
and characterized by an enormous social transformation potential.
In 2007, I and Marcus moved to Paranapiacaba
to live and to carry out our social work.
Paranapiacaba is an historical city, yet it has lots of poverty.
That enabled us to perceive
that what people really needed was trust, respect and money,
not just education.
Resignation and apathy were evident and undeniable,
and they reflected a state of depression and social exclusion.
The problem was so huge they no longer knew what happened to them.
Nobody took advantage of opportunities,
as they didn't have any motivation,
or, if motivated, they lacked opportunity.
In order to break this vicious circle
they needed a project that not only foughty poverty
but that was able to promote social inclusion as well.
That is, an educational process able to re-establish trust
and social relations, for everybody.
That is, not just by giving everyone what they needed
as that would have created a dependency, but by making sure
that no one would be dependant from others.
So a freedom and emancipation process was necessary,
they needed a Citizens' Basic Income.
Yet, back then, much like the best part of the Brasilian population,
they didn't know that the Citizens' Basic Income
had been enshrined in a Federal Law in Brasil since 2004.
For a very of a simple reason:
the law had never been enacted.
Anywhow, back then,
the true answer was not in the law, but in rights.
Not just in the rights of the Brasilian citizens,
but in the universal right that any human being has,
that of living in the minimum conditions required to live a free and dignified life.
The universal right, without any discrimination,
to a basic capital.
Or, in other words,
an income sufficient to satisfy primary needs,
without any kind of segregation or request by some company,
in exchange for something from the community.
After one year of notional and practical studies
in the free library and recreation center, in Paranapiacaba,
in cooperation with the public powers and creating a great outcry,
we launched a project for Paranapiacaba.
Before long we had to spend
a considerable amount of time and money
in attempting to keep our word
and we strived to obtain support and financing from public entities and companies,
but always without any success.
That was the critical point in time in which we took the decision
that would have changed the direction of this story.
We asked ourselves:
why don't we take all the money wasted
each month in attempting to persuade politicians and use it to finance
the income of a community small enough for our pockets?
Obviously resources couldn't have been the one and only parameter:
we also needed to consider other variables
as well as our operative limits.
We found a small rural village,
a rather secluded one, inhabited by nearly 100 people.
After a first meeting,
27 people agreed to join the project.
So, in a rather indipendent and quiet fashion,
on the 25th of October 2008
the first Citizen Basic Income was paid out:
maybe that payment wasn't the very first in the world of that kind,
but it probably was the very first paid to a citizen by a citizen.
Today, three years after that payment, 89 people
receive 30 reais each month,
the equivalent of roughly 12 euro per capita per month.
Clearly, the project doesn't consist only in
distributing cash:
we are aware of the fact that poverty isn't just material,
as it is also cultural and, above all, political.
That's why we understand the citizen basic income
as a component of a social capital that needs to manifest itself
in all the others aspects related to accessing society.
As an income, from an economic perspective; as knowledge, from a cultural one;
and as individual and collective decision power from a political perspective.
That is, freedom, rights and democracy.
By following this methodology,
we designed an entire methodology resting on three pillars:
maximum transparency efficiency;
inspirational pedagogics;
self determination for a direct democracy.
By adopting the principles of efficiency and transparency,
a radical transformation occours among the sources of resources:
all the resources are distributed entirely into the hands of the participants,
thus they are not wasted into ReCivitas mechanism and operative costs.
In inspirational pedagogy, every act has the same meaning as the principle it purports to express.
The meaning of the citizen basic income isn't conveyed through words,
we convey it through acts that are subsequently reinforced through discussion.
In this process, theory and practice are a single object in the same space,
that doesn't require the large and expensive structure of a separated pedagogical environment.
Pedagogy is conducted inside the project,
and the project itself is the pedagogical act.
The third and last pillar is fundamental as it determines eligibility
and self determination through direct democracy.
That means that we understand the community as a network,
in accordance with the principle of the citizen basic income right,
we don't understand people as a group of people
in a specific territory or geopolitical space.
People are the community and the community
is defined by the social network composed by these people.
Therefore people decide who belongs to the community and who doesn't,
thus eliminating costs and bureocracy, while gaining self esteem
as the community itself defines its identity.
That's the principle of community through direct democracy.
This project wasn't presented merely to
provoke some public power, but rather to guarantee the enactment of a right,
that thus far has existed only as a theory.
But we didn't limit ourselves to expressing a possibility,
it was necessary to produce empirical justificative evidence.
That was the core of the experience:
only results could answered
some of the questions pertaining to citizen basic income,
whether they were prejudiced question or not, questions that couldn't have been left answerless.
Would people have felt safe or not?
Wouldn't it be better, more efficient, to just give to the needy?
Can so little money make the difference? And what difference?
And with what degree of freedom and self determination
can it work at the present day?
In other words, after being conditioned for their entire life
to behave as required from them, with incentives and punishments,
will they still be able to develop sentiments of solidarity
and to live like a community
in a system based on reciprocal trust and equal rights?
This is the purpose of the project.
In order to answer to all these questions
the project has been opened to indipendent and international studies and researches,
to which we'll give both space and voice.
"The argument of poor people not spending incomes responsibly
leading to a preference of state transfers "in kind"
or pegged to certain conditionality, is empirically defeated:
very poor households with little access to paid work,
have been shown to spend money received
on basic compsuntion goods
and on healthcare and education for family members,
well capable of taking strategic decisions
on how to improve family livelyhood
in the medium and long term, through responsible spending patterns".
Alice Krozer - CEPAL ONU
"In Quantinga Velho the most important social common
is the time dedicated to others outside of the family,
without being payed
and it's more than the average working time per capita
in many developed countries.
The basic income project in Quantinga Velho shows that
providing a basic income may be the cheaper solution
with a better effect on the local social capital
and commons" Dr Alexander Dill.
"The basic income of 30 reais at Quatinga Velho
is just enough to help people meet the most basic material needs.
Childrens are the ones taking the greatest advantage from it.
ReCivitias project succeeded
notwithstanding its limited financial resources
in obtaining significant social effects.
The positive impact on the satisfaction of basic needs
and on the quality of life of those who took part to the project ought to be underlined.
Results allow us to conclude that the basic income
contributed to the sustainable development of Quatinga Velho,
and the effects were so convincing,
expecially in the areas of guaranteeing basic needs,
improving quality of life and social skills." - Matias Rudolph
"However, if the Law 10,835 hasn't been applied in Brasil,
a small neighborhood of Mogi Das Cruzes
enters history as the first location in Brasil
where the basic income has been deployed.
From this perspective, Santos Neto believes that the basic income
provides breaking dependence on welfare programs,
thus preventing the distorsion of the universal right
conditional and therefore subject to electoral use,
either by the expectation of grant, or the fear of its withdrawal,
interfering with the free and conscious
exercise of voting rights" - Franceso Arrega.
"Furthermore, from the basic income project of Quating Velho,
we have learned that to really evolve simple income transfer
to a basic income it is necessary for the governance of the program
to promote the values of citizenship.
Elegibility for recognition in the assembly model
is preferable in small communities, where social control is possible.
In addition, this model for determining
the elegibility in meetings will be closer to the emancipation policy
pursued by the basic income.
We therefore propose that the city follow the example of the basic income in Quatinga Velho,
and launch a first pilot project, for example, five years.
- Anthony Baert.
We at ReCivitas, in a simple and schematic fashion,
conclude that the changes produced by the pilot project
of basic income in Quatinga Velho
set people free from concerns for their immediate survival.
A status of real freedom, that ensures
not just the end of the most primitive prohibitions,
but rather the emergence of new perspectives for the future.
And for realizing this future
we have realized the BigBank project:
a social bank based on guarantee basic income
aimed at providing a basic taxless income,
thus making the whole network of borderless protection sustainable,
as in this model people don't contribute with their capital,
but only with their interest, or with part of it,
to the payment of the basic income
through the sustainability found of the third sector.
Presently
we are in a new test phase of the bank:
microcredit for basic income is already ongoing in Quatinga Velho,
and from the next year, with a public act, the
replication of the model and the declaration of multipliers will be opened.
These new communities will be financed by the BigBank project.
In order to derminte, or maybe it's better to say to open up the possibilities
for this new future, let's quote Professor Tadashi Okanouchi:
"This is a small project, but it shows
an enormous, incredible potential for
the social and economic development of the local community.
I dare say that this project is setting a turning point
in the history of world hunger and misery.
As it is in the local perspective used by this project
that we finally were able to find
the proof of the the efficacy of a new, simple method
for eradicating poverty from the world." (Translation: gianlucafinocchiaro75@gmail.com, Italian subtitles: Daniele Berti) UNDERGOING REVISION