2014 is the year for Brazil. The world cup, one of the world’s main sport event, will take place in the country. People around the globe can’t wait to watch the games surrounded by beautiful beaches and cities, nice people, and brilliant soccer players. That’s the fun part, but what about the rest?
Even being a country in evidence, Brazil is still under developing. It has a lot to change and improve to be the perfect host of a big event as the world cup. Poverty, lack of security and infrastructure are some of the main issues when thinking in having more than 500.000 international spectators in the country.
Just think about the fact that 16 million people still live in the condition of extreme poverty, and more than 30 thousand young people die each year by firearms.
Because of this, when people see something wrong going on they just say “Imagina na copa”. Which means “Imagine all of this during the world cup”. Brazilians still don’t believe in their own country as a host of such a big event.
Thinking about that, a group of young people created the project “Imagina na Copa”. The idea is, when seeing something wrong, don’t look at it in a negative way, but act to make it better, to help, to solve the problem. The proposal is to motivate people to take action and help Brazil win this world cup. And when they say “win”, is not just in the soccer field, but “win” as a country .
A website has been created to share every week a different story, from a different person, of how he/she is changing the country through their own acts. Besides the website, they will promote workshops in 12 cities to guide the youth on their own projects and to spread the word.
The main objective is to motivate the young generation to act and help. Why youth? First because the project were created by them. Second, because young people are constantly searching for a daily meaning for their lifes, they really want to do something worth it and that makes the difference!
Among the partners of this project, we can count a newspaper (Folha de S.Paulo) and a digital agency called AllIn.
Promotion on Social Media
And of course, the main venue to communicate this project are social media. As we’ve already seen, social media marketing in Brazil is booming. The country gained the 2nd place worldwide, behind the US, in terms of:
- Facebook users, with over 65 million people
- Twitter users, with over 40 million people (and a soon-to-be-opened Twitter office in the country).
With an incredible growth of +300% over the last years, Facebook overtook Orkut as the main social networking platform.
The “Imagina na copa” project already counts more than 400 supporters, and has a Facebook fan page with over 4K fans. Besides the website and Facebook, they are using Twitter, Newsletter, Vimeo and Youtube to disclose the project and interact with people. And, as of now, interaction seems to be pretty high.
One year for changes. Let’s see the next chapters of this movement. The message is clear: it is time to act… now!
Fernanda Costa Gama