Initiating - born as a shared dream - Community Mobilization in Crisis

Initiating – born as a shared dream

Born as a Shared dream

To design a shared dream, it might be important to assess collectively a community’s needs and resources, since the project can arise from the need to answer a common problem and/or from the possibility to take advantage of an opportunity. In the case of the community school project, for example, the community could have identified the lack of educational programs to meet the children’s needs. In the case of a community market event, the project could have risen from the identification of community talents and potentialities. You can understand more about assessment through this link (Link to the resources assessment flow)

Consequently, sometimes, the dream can be born during a session of assessment of needs and resources. De-briefing on possible solutions to a problem and merging ideas can make this shared dream emerge.

In Itapoã, a city located in a surrounding area of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, a group of residents organized a city hall and started to gather to seek their rights. After organizing it, the group realized that, given the context of unemployment, they had another common need – food security – which they could address by planting their garden to guarantee their food (the solution built by the community).

Horta Comunitária

Transcript

In fact, it was a very interesting thing, because the people who mobilized, in fact, were all unhappy with the government. And one day they had a political meeting, I won’t name names, and everyone was there, at this political meeting, and the people started complaining to the deputies that we didn’t have water, we didn’t have mail, we didn’t have, we didn’t have nothing on our court. And one of the deputies looked at us and said, “but why don’t you have it?”

And those words stayed just like that in my head, and in the minds of those people who joined together to be able to occupy the garden. And then we asked, oh it’s because the government doesn’t do it, because you have it there, you can do it. And then he said, “No, it’s your right. You have to organize, mobilize, to seek your rights”. So, these words were the key words for us to organize ourselves.

So from that meeting, Marcelo Rivoneti emerged, who is a companion, who was very nice. And He started the “people let’s get organized, let’s set up a city hall”. Then came the city hall, actually. So the guys mobilized, they made the election, they were the leaders of the courts, each one at the time, it was 2011, January-February 2011. And the guys made the election on the court, next to the garden, and then they elected me, at the time , as mayor and then we started to organize the whole crowd. And the good thing about it all, because our block 378, all of them mobilized, so the guys really supported the movement at the time.

Yeah… when the vegetable garden appeared, when we entered, we saw need that everyone was unemployed. So the guys who had were Marilan, Carlos, Priscila, Cida, João, me, Vanessa and Marcelo. So we bought from planting for own consumption, because it would already save for certain things in our house, right. I was going to save on buying a spring onion, buy a pumpkin, buy other vegetables, lettuce, arugula. So, whether we like it or not, we would also save in our pockets. So that’s when the first implementation of the community came about. So there was the motto ‘planted, reaped’. Because for you to be able to harvest, you have to plant and take care of the garden, right. So the need arose right there, from unemployment.

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Introduction to Project Management

Initiating – born as a shared dream

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