Celebrating Phase II in Belém

During the last week of June, the Promise Tracker team gathered in Belém for a series of events to celebrate the incredible work achieved by our partners in Pará during Phase II of the project.

Technology, Transparency and Citizen Oversight: Developing New Strategies

On Monday, a group of over 150 participants including university and high school students, government officials, and community leaders gathered at the State Court of Auditors to present the results from the school lunch monitoring campaign “Égua da Merenda, João!” implemented in Belém and Santarém over the past year. As part of the program to commemorate students’ work, we heard from the dean of the Federal University of Pará, the General Ombudsman for the Ministry of Transparency, the Public Prosecutor of Santarém, and others from Pará and beyond looking to learn this experience to inform other citizen oversight initiatives.

Technology & Social Change

On Wednesday at the Federal University of Pará we hosted a discussion about work at the intersection of technology and social change, highlighting projects from Colab-USP, Civic Media, UFPA’s Laboratory for Innovation in Oversight of the Public Sector (LAIC), and Project SOL. Participants included university students from computer science, public policy, social technology, and public accounting and representatives from civil society, public assistance programs, and the Municipal Court of Auditors. We were thrilled by the level of engagement and exchange with this group and look forward to continuing the conversation and building greater community in Pará amongst those organizing for positive change through technology in diverse sectors.