Lina Galvani Institute

Project Serra do Salitre

  • Strengthening Participatory Instances and Investment in Activities

    Community starts to carry out municipal improvement projects

    I want to mobilize my friends, acquaintances and strangers too. Do more for the others, teaching them how to fish – not giving them fish – and helping them live in community, networking.

    After the workshop, my prospects, dreams and desires are broader. I learned a lot.

    Serra do Salitre residents and participants of the workshops

    In early March, the future agenda for Serra do Salitre, built over 2015, was presented to the community in order to bring their different demands to the debate. To extend the reach of information and encourage mass compliance, we installed charts with key results and instructions on how to participate around the town. Link to chart.

    In May, two workshops were held in the community. In the Associative Networks Workshop, locals learned how to work in multistakeholder networks, enhancing their knowledge, relationships and achievements. In the second workshop, participants were taught about Project Development, receiving information on how to put their ideas into practice and apply the lessons learned, structuring the projects they had chosen for the community.
    In September, these projects were supported by the Institute and some of them started to be implemented, as follows:

    - Horta Escolar (School Vegetable Garden): to raise awareness among students and the school community about the importance of consuming organic food and promoting healthy eating habits; partnership with three local public schools.
    - Gincana do Conhecimento (Knowledge Spirit Week): to raise awareness about the importance of studying and reading habits through games and rewards. Its first edition involved 335 students from the State School of Serra.
    - Learning Community: in partnership with the Natura Institute and the town hall, it contributes to the objectives of the Education group, i.e. to create a collaborative network to implement initiatives that improve teaching skills and learning. The project began with a presentation to the mayor and the department of education, teachers, students, families and dwellers. At the end, six of the nine public schools in area joined the initiative, involving 96 teachers and 800 students.

    KEY FINDINGS
    During the construction of the Future Agenda, a large audience attended the debate, but when we started to plan it out, the number of participants decreased dramatically. We understand that, concomitant to the discussions, we must work even harder to strengthen community bonds and thereby contribute to put ideas and actions into practice. Another important aspect is the search and legitimization of existing structures, such as the school (which has bonds with families, students and government). In other words, we must be aware of spaces already in place and map partners to enhance the projects and expand community participation.

    NEXT STEPS
    Maintain the investments in the Education group and the partnership with the Comunidade de Aprendizagem Project (awareness-raising and practice-consolidation in the school routine), in addition to launching the 2016 tender for projects in education, environment, healthcare and tourism.