The Body Shop, in partnership with the youth-led NGO Engajamundo, is promoting the activist campaign Sua Voz. Your Power. It wants to make young people aware of participation in politics and empower them so that their ideas are heard and respected. the result of a global partnership between the brand and the United Nations Secretary-General for Youth to boost the voice of millions of young people in more than 75 countries on six continents.
The strategy is part of a survey – carried out with more than 27,000 people in 26 countries, including Brazil – which identified that two out of three respondents agree that the balance of generations in politics is wrong. In the world, only 2.6% of parliamentarians are under 30 years old.
Be Seen, Be Heard, held in December 2021 by Dynata, sought to understand how prejudices and structural barriers prevent young people from participating in public life. It found that 82% of people agree that political systems need drastic reform to adapt to the future.
Participants also shared recommendations on dealing with these challenges. Among them, increasing the participation of young people in issues that will affect them in the near future, such as climate change, inequality and the lack of guarantee of human rights, especially for the most vulnerable part of the population, such as women and girls.
In the Brazilian section of the research, with 1003 respondents, 31% of people under 30 years old said that they would be more stimulated if they had more access to information and 25% that they need to believe in effective changes to get involved in public life.
With the Your Voice campaign. Its Power, The Body Shop wants to stimulate this belief of change and transformation. “In Brazil, the main trigger for people to get involved and want to have a political voice is the possibility of making significant changes. We want to encourage and lend a hand to these young people, so that they are more seen and heard. And, above all, to prove that voice of each person is unique and is strong enough to mobilize much-needed transformations, says Paula Pimenta, the brand’s general manager in Brazil.
To put the strategy into practice, actions such as conversation circles, urban interventions and important content on social networks are planned, addressing issues such as environmental racism, social inequality, urban mobility. The first meeting was a conversation circle on Thursday (4th) about socio-political activism and the representation of girls and women in public life.