Word: rios
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rodrigo, you are crazy. Poor people can never use computers." That is what friends and business associates in Rio de Janiero said to Rodrigo Baggio five years ago when he told them about his dream to bring technology into the city's sprawling slums, called favelas. He didn't listen. Now Baggio, 30, operates 117 computer schools in the slums of 13 Brazilian states through his Committee for the Democratization of Information Technology (CDI). Most of the 32,000 young people who have completed classes either have jobs or are starting their own businesses. Without Baggio's inspired idea, most...
...financial and professional backing for more than 1,000 social entrepreneurs in 34 countries who, like Baggio, are using business techniques and expertise to help people help themselves. A three-year stipend from Ashoka and its global fellowship of executives, mentors and consultants enabled Baggio to enlarge CDI beyond Rio. He hopes someday to enlarge it beyond Brazil. Says Baggio: "We believe we can adapt it to other poor countries...
...relaxed summer beaches of Rio de Janeiro, nobody glances twice when a woman parades by in a microscopic bikini or wriggles out of her top to sunbathe. But last month pet-shop assistant Rosemeri da Costa, 34, was tanning herself topless on Recreio beach when a shadow fell across her towel. She looked up and saw a gang of policemen armed with truncheons standing over her. In a spasm of puritanism, the police had decided to enforce a 70-year-old law against immorality. They demanded that Da Costa slip back into her top. When she refused, the police dragged...
Many Brazilians were outraged. Why were lawmen wasting their time harassing topless women in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world? Protesters stormed Rio's legendary beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. Women covered their breasts with placards that read DOWN WITH SEXISM, UP WITH PLEASURE, while men strutted along the shore wearing women's bikini tops. After three days of ridicule, Rio's Mayor Luiz Paulo Conde relented and declared that the immorality law would no longer be enforced. "This is going to be the summer of the topless bather," Conde promised, despite grumbles from...
...Costa, meanwhile, has become Rio's latest celebrity. Going topless, she explained, was "a natural thing to do. It felt delicious." Before next month's carnival, one neighborhood will hold a special "Friends of the Breast" extravaganza to honor her well-bronzed assets...