About me
Joao is a 25-year-old Brazilian-Italian activist and social entrepreneur that has been advocating for a more meaningful engagement of young people in decision-making processes and as partners in development efforts worldwide for 12 years.
He started his activism when he was 13 and never stopped ever since. He has been working on different causes, campaigns, projects and movements.
At the age of 17, he led a campaign to establish the Municipal Youth Council in Santos, a platform that allows young people to advise on the youth polices and strategies of the city. He was later elected to be a city advisor at the Youth Council for two mandates.
He was part of the UN “Making Commitments Matter” process in Brazil. The initiative mapped, benchmarked and evaluated national youth policies in Brazil and presented a set of evidence-based policy recommendations to the National Government in 2004. Those included the need for creating more comprehensive National Youth Policies and an Inter-ministerial Secretariat dedicated to Youth, both were achieved on the following year.
Ever since, he has worked developing a range of youth-led projects to empower young people and their communities in over 40 different countries in all corners of the world. For 5 years Joao acted as the Institutional Development Manager at Peace Child International headquarters in the UK, a youth-run international organisation that champions the concept of youth-led development in over 150 countries.
Joao has been in the forefront process of recognizing youth participation within the UN System. Since 2004 at the COP10 in Argentina, he has been advocating with UNFCCC for the recognition of young people as a major group at the UN Climate Negotiations, status that was finally achieved officially in Copenhagen during COP15.
Currently Joao sits in two Advisory Committees for the UN-HABITAT (United Nations Human Settlements Programme). As the Latin American and the Caribbean representative at the UN-HABITAT Youth Advisory Board, he advises the agency on its youth mainstreaming and empowerment strategies. He is also part of the Advisory Committee which oversees the management of the UN-HABITAT Urban Youth Fund, a fund financing and championing youth-led development worldwide.
For over a year now, Joao has been consulting for UNICEF working in different projects related to their Climate Ambassadors Programme. Since April 2010 Joao is consulting for UNICEF Zambia working on the “Unite4Climate Zambia” programme. The U4C Zambia programme partners with young people in all of the country’s nine provinces to combat climate change and is helping to empower and inspire thousands of children.
He has also been actively advocating in the field of SRHR and gender equality, and has been a member of YouAct – European Youth Network on Sexual and Reproductive Rights since 2008.
For six years, Joao was a columnist for CAPRICHO magazine covering issues related to youth project and entrepreneurship, and currently is a correspondent on youth issues for different media outlets and publications including the World Bank’s Youthink initiative.
Currently Joao is finishing his degree in Community Regeneration at Middlesex University in London and is engaged in a national movement in Brazil called #euvotodistrital that is pushing for Political Reform. He is also part of a team developing youth engagement strategies for Rio+20, UN Earth Summit.
To learn more about Joao, check his personal blog: www.joaofelipescarpelini.wordpress.com or follow him on twitter: www.twitter.com/joaoscarpelini
Joao is a 25-year-old Brazilian-Italian activist and social entrepreneur that has been advocating for a more meaningful engagement of young people in decision-making processes and as partners in development efforts worldwide for 12 years.
He...
(more)
Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Italian