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| Sister Joana, Sister Anita, and I met with Mara, a volunteer leader of the Pastoral da Crianca |
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| This is the book that the volunteer leaders use to educate themselves on the process of participating in Pastoral da Terra. Sister Joana let me borrow it from her in order to get to know a little more about the NGO before we met with Mara. It was great because then I was able to ask questions about what I had read. This was a very good test of my Portuguese since I had to read in Portuguese and understand! It also helped a lot to read out loud to Sister Joana to work on pronunciation. |
Once we "bundled up" (meaning I wore closed toe shoes, a sweater, and long pants), Sisters Joana and Anita and I spent the morning in the house of a woman who is a volunteer leader for an NGO that began in Brazil thirty years ago called Pastoral da Crianca. The work of this organization, though simple on the surface, is anything but simple. Rather, it is incredible and commendable communitarian work (as the Brazilian government has realized...a point I will address momentarily). I first learned about Pastoral da Crianca when I traveled to Paranaiguara and met Sister Christina, who helped initiate part of the program, especially in her region in the south of Goais (see post July 4, 2013). The volunteer leaders of Pastoral da Crianca are members of the community in which they work and are trained by the organization before they officially commence. The job of the volunteer leader is to provide education and preventative care for pregnant women and children and their families until six years of age without prejudice in up to fifteen families. The leaders do home visits for each of their assigned families with the goal of learning more about the environment in which the mothers and children leave and the familial atmosphere. There is also a Celebration of Life one time per month and group meetings to unite all of the families and to develop a sense of community and understanding. The mission of the Pastoral da Crianca is based on John 10:10, "So that all children may have life in abundance." Under this umbrella, the work of the organization works within communities to develop the community and to make it more productive and self-sufficient, thereby enabling citizens to better their own lives with the resources available in the community.
When the Brazilian government noticed the success of the Pastoral da Crianca, saving the lives of mothers and children, preventing hunger and malnutrition, and keeping records for reference, it began to plan how it would be able to use the model of the NGO to better health care in Brazil and achieve similar success. Therefore, the idea of the PSF, the type of family health center that I visited at the end of June, was developed. The PSF is somewhat community based in that it is small and within the community that it works, it includes home visits for the same reason as the Pastoral da Crianca, and in theory is an excellent idea. However, it seems that what the PSF is lacking is the same type of motivation to better ones own community since the doctors that work there are not usually from the community. Also, the amount of people who are supposed to be served by each PSF is incredibly high and so cannot be as personal. Ultimately, I think the differences noted in the Pastoral da Crianca and the PSFs ultimately may be an indication of who needs to take charge of initiating the changes necessary in health care.
In the evening we returned to Jesus of Nazareth to continue Integration Week. Tonight we learned about the effects of industrialization on the indigenous populations in Brazil especially in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. This was discussed in connection with the Wedding at Cana and Jesus asking the Samaritan woman for water at the well in the Gospel of John. The bottom line of the connection ended up being that we are all on a journey--Jesus included when he was on earth--and that without thinking of the ways that our journey intertwines with the journeys of others, we will fall into disrespect for each other and for creation. Also, within the theme with which we began yesterday of "Living well," the speakers stressed that living well must include respecting the way that others also can live well.
