BRAZIL:
Happiness Is Promoting
Health and Development in the Amazon
By Mario Osava
SANTARÉM, Brazil (IPS) - On his fourth trip to Brazil, Prince
Charles plans to visit a project in the Amazon jungle that has cut
infant mortality and illiteracy nearly in half by organising poor
communities to get involved in their own development.
The Projeto Saúde and Alegria (PSA - Health and Happiness Project)
has won a number of prizes, both within the country and abroad, and
has been visited by a number of prominent personalities. But the
Mar. 11-15 visit by Britain’s heir-to-the-throne will bring it a new
level of international visibility and could help it overcome its
current financial hurdles, the directors of the programme hope.
Reproducing the initiative in other poor areas is the new dream of
PSA founder Eugenio Scannavino. "We have developed a methodology
that can be applied anywhere, including urban slums; all we need now
are the funds," he said, clarifying that the project’s initiatives
are low cost and bring results within just a few years.
It all began 25 years ago, when Scannavino left the cities where he
had spent the first part of his life - Săo Paulo, where he lived,
and Rio de Janeiro, where he studied medicine – and moved to
Santarém, an Amazon jungle city of around 300,000 people in northern
Brazil, to bring medicine to those who most needed it, in an
innovative and integral fashion.
He began by working with the city government in 1984 and 1985, but
decided instead to set up a non-governmental organisation, the
Centre of Advanced Studies for Social and Environmental Promotion,
better known as PSA, to ensure the independence of the project from
municipal authorities and to establish a community development
project managed by local residents themselves.
Simple clean-up and hygiene measures, like channeling water and
disseminating the use of chlorine to sterilise drinking and cooking
water, as well as widespread vaccination campaigns and
community-built septic tanks with concrete lids, reduced the infant
mortality rate to 27 per 1,000 live births in the 150 communities
served by PSA, which have a total combined population of 30,000.
By contrast, the infant mortality rate in nearby neighbourhoods that
are not served by PSA averages 52 per 1,000 live births.
In addition, the illiteracy rate among people over 15 is 5.5 percent
in PSA communities, compared to 11.3 percent in surrounding areas.
The name of the project sums up its methodology. Health is the focus
of its actions, identified as the main problem in participatory
debates with local residents. But it is a broad concept that
encompasses the environment, education and food security, thus
requiring sustainable economic development. And happiness and
communication are decisive instruments in bringing about results.
Happiness is personified by Paulo Roberto de Oliveira, better known
as Magnolio, his name as a clown.
He leads the Great Mocorongo Circus, which mobilises local
communities and teaches hygiene and disease prevention, through
laughter. His jokes and antics keep people entertained in the
meetings he leads as one of PSA’s three general coordinators.
Magnolio, who is also from Săo Paulo, studied law, social services
and physical education. He was teaching – at the primary, secondary
and tertiary levels – until Scannavino invited him to join the
project as educational director.
Earlier, he had taken a circus arts course with his brother,
learning about acrobatics, balancing, juggling – and humour.
"Circus arts is a profession that you can exercise even as an old
man, but you have to learn it at a young age," argued the
grandfather who recommended the course of studies to the two
brothers.
They were successful as an acrobatic clown duo, but later separated,
and Magnolio stayed in Santarém.
"Mocorongo is an interactive circus, with no distance between actors
and spectators, who also express their ideas in the circus
language," said Magnolio, who describes himself as an "ecological
clown." Children and adults paint their faces and take part in the
show. Everyone is an artist, and the entire PSA staff performs some
circus routine at one point or another.
Mocorongo is the name given to natives of Santarém, a city in the
northern state of Pará, where the Tapajós and Amazon rivers
converge.
The project also uses methods from the Theatre of the Oppressed, a
street theatre method created by Brazilian playwright and director
Augusto Boal. The plays teach techniques for preventing diseases or
for using homemade rehydration solutions, for example.
Dozens of men running towards a circle of women represent the race
among sperm, in which only the winner will fertilise the egg. The
sketch is part of sex education efforts aimed at fighting the spread
of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.
Keeping teaching on health and other matters fun makes people
eagerly await the return of the "Abaré", a boat that serves as the
PSA’s mobile hospital. The project’s most visible tool, the boat
makes periodic tours from one riverbank community to another,
providing medical and dental care, vaccinations, family planning and
even minor surgical procedures.
The PSA "is a big educational project" focusing on health, economic
matters, and self-management of local interests by the community
itself, but education is the most important aspect, said Magnolio.
The project involves programmes in community health, the forest
economy, and education, culture and communication, all of which come
together in the concept of community-driven development, said
Scannavino.
His brother Caetano Scannavino Filho, who is also a general
coordinator of PSA, but in the administrative department, sees
economic and financial aspects as the project’s main challenge
today, because of the difficulty in generating sustainable incomes
for local populations in the jungle.
Natural resources like fish and forestry products are becoming more
and more scarce, limiting extractive activities like the gathering
of nuts and fruit, while alternatives such as agroecology
initiatives take years to consolidate, and "no one provides such
long-term financing," he said.
Furthermore, processing the fruit and nuts to add value takes time,
energy and capital that is not readily available in the area, he
added.
PSA is active along the lower stretch of the Tapajós river and its
tributary, the Arapiuns river, near the Amazon river. The
beneficiary communities are riverbank villages in two nature
reserves, where they are allowed to make use of the natural
resources in a sustainable manner.
Local houses are mainly made of wood and located away from the river
to escape flooding. The water level in the Tapajós river rises more
than six metres in rainy season, submerging the riverbank beaches
and limiting tourism to the dry season, in the second half of the
year.
Government agencies built a large number of low-cost housing units
in the area, made of bricks and cement to avoid the use of wood. But
the houses are criticised as being too closed-in and stifling,
running counter to local building styles, which keep people cooler
in the heat of the jungle.
The local people, known as "caboclos" – a term referring to
Brazilians of mixed indigenous and European descent who live in the
Amazon jungle – "do not have an enterprising mentality," a
characteristic that has been aggravated by broad government income
transfer programmes, said Davide Pompermaier from Italy, who began
working with PSA 15 years ago.
Moreover, "their traditional means of production are unsustainable,"
because they are based on the clearing of forests by the
slash-and-burn technique and the cultivation of mandioc, "which is
labour-intensive and of little value."
But the forest economy group that Pompermaier coordinates has shown
results in fomenting craft-making, community-led ecotourism
ventures, agroecological production and the generation of solar
energy and other kinds of electricity. The focus is "to invest in
young people to change local mentalities," and produce more food in
a sustainable fashion, he explained.
Santarém has been governed by a woman mayor for the past few years,
and rural trade unions have incorporated the term "trabalhadoras" -
the female form of "workers" – in their names, reflecting advances
towards gender equality in the area. But PSA continues to address
the question of gender discrimination, especially in its work with
children.
Young people in the area have been mobilising and seeing new
horizons open up, mainly through PSA’s education and communication
programme (EDUCOM). The Mocorongo Communication Network involves 350
young people in community radio stations and the production and
distribution of small newspapers, videos and television programmes.
Telecentres with a cultural focus, six of which are operating and
five of which are in the process of being installed, have brought
new opportunities for communication and strengthened community
organisation and mobilisation.
The telecentres are two-story wooden eco-friendly buildings, with
the first floor open to meetings and cultural activities and the
second dedicated to bringing the Internet and new technologies to
local people and expanding digital inclusion.
Fabio Pena, 29, is a symbol of PSA. He started out participating in
the project’s activities at the age of 10 in his village on the
shores of the Amazon river, three hours by boat from the city of
Santarém. Today, with a degree in pedagogy under his belt, he
coordinates the EDUCOM programme.
"Our work is to create opportunities for learning and inclusion for
the upcoming generations of riverbank villagers," so they can have
better lives in their own communities, and so that the exodus to the
cities is not the only alternative, said Pena.
A number of local young people now head community associations in
the area.
PSA leaders say that access to new technologies, like the
telecentres and videos, have encouraged youngsters to emphasise and
rescue local culture, contrary to fears that they would be drawn in
by modern urban lifestyles.
Elis Lucien Barbosa started out as a volunteer and now forms part of
the EDUCOM team. She is proud of being "a good clown," and she helps
out with community publications and blogs, the production of which
has mushroomed at the telecentres.
As a teacher, she is interested in having an indirect influence on
schools, to make teaching more interesting and better adapted to
local realities.
Mónica de Almeida, 20, a community leader trained by the Mocorongo
Network, is now a video producer after receiving training in
participative video techniques at the Biskops-Arnö Nordic school in
Sweden, which periodically sends teams to Brazil to give workshops
to young people involved in PSA.
Today, Almeida coordinates "the telecentre that brought the age of
the Internet to the town" of Belterra, near Santarém, by training
more than 700 people in its courses, she said.
In the past, local cybercafés went under because so few people
visited them, she noted.
Almeida’s team has also produced five videos on issues like teen
pregnancy and youth unemployment, and has held workshops on
collective blogs.
These young people will ensure the continuity of the local
development initiatives promoted by PSA, said Scannavino. |
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