Varjão do Torto is a low income settlement area on the outskirts of Brasília, Brazil’s political capital. It neighbors the land where my community is located, and it is full of young people eager to make things happen. This is where I am collaborating in a workshop for the local ‘Ponto de Cultura’ (Cultural Hotspot), a government program sponsored by the Ministry of Culture:

“The cultural hotspot, a program with a budget of R$ 37 millions (£ 9.2 millions), is about democratization, permitting ideas of different places, from rich to poor cities, be exchanged. “The main goal is to plant seeds” says Claudio. A hotspot is established with a broadband connection, infrastructure made with recycled equipments and, most of all, technical workshops of open-source software, allowing anyone to digitalize their creativity. The workshops aim to create independency, leaving on the hands of each community the ownership of their individual process, decentralizing the system. Technology has always been a tool for social inclusion, but here the main objective is not only to make possible the incorporation of labor to the market, but to give people voice, power over their expression, to give them citizenship.”
Cultural Hotspots – Brazilian open-source and copyleft – Mazine.ws

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