The Center For Digital Inclusion Story

In May of 2009, my daughter and I were attending the Call-of-the-Times Global Dialogue facilitated by Peter Senge at the Global Retreat Center in Oxford, England. This was a group of diverse leaders that came together from different countries and different sectors around the world. We explored the critical issues facing our world; shared our stories and learned from one another. Rodrigo Baggio’s story about The Center for Digital Inclusion caught my interest because I believe digital inclusion is not only a powerful vision, it is a matter of social justice.

I asked Rodrigo and his colleague, Florencia Estrade if we could meet so I could learn more about the CDI story. That day over lunch, I was pulled into this beautiful story about thousands of people who were transforming their lives and lifting their communities through their partnership with CDI. I was not only fascinated by the CDI story, Rodrigo’s passion stirred my spirit. The more he talked the more I realized I had met another DreamMaker. When I got back to the United States, I called my publisher in Brazil and suggested we feature Brazilian stories in the next book in my DreamMakers series. This was the ideal time to spotlight DreamMakers in Brazil because Rio de Janeiro had won both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 International Olympics. We decided to go for it!

I went to Rio de Janeiro to learn more about CDI. While I was there I visited two favelas, - Morro dos Macacos and Morro da Providência. (Favelas are shantytown poor communities, built by the people in the hills of Rio de Janeiro.) I wanted to hear and see firsthand how people were using the CDI methodology and technology to change their lives.  At the CDI Community Centers, I interviewed grass-root community people who had transformed their lives’, some, from unimaginable poverty and despair, to become remarkable DreamMakers. I cried during every interview. These community leaders are committed to helping to transform the lives of others, and to creating healthy, positive communities. Their transformation stories are remarkable. They are achieving amazing results in spite of their circumstances. I published DreamMakers: Agentes de Transformação (Agents of Transformation) in June of 2010.

Rodrigo Baggio created The Center for Digital Inclusion in 1993 in response to the poverty, and sense of hopelessness he saw in many of the impoverished communities in Rio de Janeiro. Then, an internet entrepreneur, Rodrigo combined his two loves: computers and social change, to create CDI. The work of the Centers has helped thousands of people not just to become digitally literate, but also to become active, informed citizens capable of organizing and transforming their communities. Rodrigo did not stop there, as he witnessed the proliferation of information technology, explode around the world over the next decade, he realized that every single day the importance of technology in creating sustainable social impact on peoples lives became ever more urgent

The Centers are a social joint venture with grass roots community based organizations. CDI selects the best partner inside a low-income community - a small NGO or social entrepreneur. CDI contributes the computers and trains community leaders and young people in the CDI curriculum and methodology to become change-makers. Because their approach is based on the principles of being self-sustainable and self-managed, they also teach the local people management skills.

CDI’s greatest strength is their highly effective educational methodology. They have a unique approach; they not only teach digital literacy, they also teach civic education, community building, empowerment and entrepreneurial skills. The students work in teams on community challenges including: economic development, human rights, health education, environmental protection and nonviolence. Their unique pedagogy requires that by the end of each 4-month course, students will have used technology as the main tool to engage in a “social advocacy project” aimed at changing a negative aspect of their community’s reality. Students collectively identify a common challenge facing their community, research that challenge and prepare an action plan to overcome it. Issues range from sexual abuse, pollution, clean water, violence, crime, and drugs, to the lack of healthcare or schools. Students then use the technical skills they’ve learned in class to tackle the problem. They mobilize their communities; run awareness campaigns, and work together to solve that specific problem. One community had been overrun by rats. A CDI class of young people took on this challenge. They made the community aware of the problem by holding powerpoint and video town hall meetings. They invited candidates of an upcoming election to a community meeting where thousands of their neighbors showed up. They gained the commitment for trash pick up from the candidates and the commitment to establish trash recycling locations from the community members. With these capacity building skills CDI graduates become active, informed citizens capable of organizing their communities, making their voice heard and affecting fundamental change -  they solved the rat problem. They used technology to create social action, social change and social inclusion. 


The people at CDI are passionately committed to their dream. CDI’s work has impacted thousands people through its network of 803 self-managed and self-sustaining CDI Community Centers throughout Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, England and Jordan.  They are helping thousands people living in abject poverty around the world, to transform their lives and communities. They are not doing charity work; they are giving people the tools to become technologically literate, self-managed and self-sustainable citizens. Most important, they are teaching people to become change-makers, using collective social action to transform their realities and lift their communities. Their results are astounding! They are evidence of what people can do when they mobilize around a compelling shared vision, rooted in deeply held values and commit themselves to making a difference in our world.   To learn more about them go to www.cdi.org.br

May all your beautiful hopes and dreams come true!

Michele