Grupo Transas do Corpo
Transas do Corpo is one of the most interesting groups in Latin America working with questions of sexual education, health, feminism, and peer education ("protagonismo juvenil"). It was founded in 1987 as a way to encourage participation of women and youth in health care, and has since expanded to include extensive peer education, counseling, and public health initiatives.
Transas understands work with health and the body “as a road to other perspectives,” which is to say that education and consciousness about the body can create other and unexpected political and personal changes (this depends on the feminist insight that the body is the site of both control and pleasure, and thus essential to any political system). The program focuses on sex education because it has traditionally been absent from public and catholic schools, and because for youth -- especially poor youth -- discourse about sex can be a way to talk about many other issues. It also opens the door to discussions of gender, often avoided in Brazil.
Transas also incorporates questions of reproductive rights into its courses; though condoms are widely available and publicized in Brazil, abortion is illegal and most forms of birth control are not well known. The condom is understood largely as a way to prevent disease, and not a way for a woman to chose when she will have a child. Transas attempts to shift the focus of this discourse toward a young woman’s control of her own body.
In addition to direct educational programs, Transas also uses the mass media, supports research and a library, and trains teachers and doctors how to include sexuality and gender issues in their work. But perhaps most importantly, the program co-ordinates an extraordinary peer education program, where youth from all social classes -- from street kids to rich kids -- teach their peers about sex and gender. Peer educators speak in classes and church groups, publish a “fanzine,” compose songs and create art about sexuality, and generally become teachers. Transas would like to extend its work to include homosexual youth, but as of yet, they have not been able to include any.
Av Antônio Fidélis, Qd.158 Lt.04 Parque Amazônia (Rua da CEMACO).
Goiania, GO, Brasil
248-2365
www.transasdocorpo.com.br
contacts: Lenise Borges
Eliane Gonçalves (transas@transasdocorpo.com.br)
