The Odebrecht Foundation turned the focus of its activities to Brazil’s Northeastern region in 1999, continuing with its mission of education adolescents for life. During that year, it teamed up with the Ayrton Senna Institute, Kellogg Foundation and the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) to implement the Alliance With Adolescents for Sustainable Development Program in Brazil’s Northeastern region. The idea was to act in regions with low Human Development Indexes located outside the dynamic axis of the brazilian economy. This initiative mobilized the forces of 18 municipalities from the regions of Baixo Sul (Bahia), Médio Jaguaribe (Ceará) and Bacia do Goitá (Pernambuco), with aims of contributing toward the formation of a new generation, more aware and trained, and to offer a social action technology based on Youth Engagement.

It was with this theme that Antonio Carlos Gomes da Costa and Maria Adenil vieira launched the book Protagonismo Juvenil – Adolescência, Educação e Participação Democrática (“Youth Engagement – Adolescence, Education and Democratic Participation”) in 2000. The work, which presents the systematization of this practice, is a manual for educators who seek to become partners in the process of educating brazilian youth and proposes a new way of seeing, understanding and acting with relation to youth.

To recognize the learning accumulated through the program and allow for the continuation, execution and integration of the results achieved, in addition to guaranteeing the reapplication of the experience in the future, the Odebrecht Foundation helped create the Alliance with the Adolescents Institute in January of 2002. During the following year, it progressively began to concentrate its efforts on Bahia’s Southern Lowlands region.