Daniel Calarco de Oliveira

Brazil

I was born in Brazil countryside and raised in a Rio de Janeiro favela, experiencing the urban violence, lack of education and labor opportunities. And to face that I create the International Youth Watch, a youth-led organization connected to the biggest think tank in Brazil, Getulio Vargas Foundation.The IYW exist to promote and protect the youth right using the UN 2030 Agenda as a guideline. To create better opportunities for young people from marginal communities. The exclusion of marginal youth from the politics due deep social inequalities is the most problematic issue in my community. I realize it as a social process of exclusion that affects young people who live in peripheral areas of the city, part of certain social groups, mainly black and LGBT+. It’s an exclusion dynamics that makes us vulnerable to violence and powerless to do the change. We have no access to the best positions in academia or in the job market, voiceless on Medias and not represented at the Government. I was born in the countryside of Brazil and moved to Rio de Janeiro. Here at Rio I’m living in favelas as Vila do Vintém and Vila Aliança, famous for violence and drugs war. Youth have been the most harmed in this reality, 30 thousand people between 15 and 29 years were killed in Brazil in 2016. But we are not numbers, I always knew who I was and where I wanted to go. I grow up struggling to have a voice, to be more than a statistic of young victims, I’m determined to change the lives of others like me. he reality here is not very different from the other Latin countries. I’m determined to change the lives of others like me. To change this reality I founded the International Youth Watch (IYW) and went to join the Peace Chain!