06.16.2021

JPIC- Brazil

Transformation: From Recycling to the Dynamics of Solidarity Cooperation

 Iltomar Siviero (Training Coordinator in the Transformation Project) – Brazil

In 2007, in the year of Fraternity Campaign we began “The Transformation Project” with the theme “Fraternity and Amazon” and the motto “Life and Mission on this ground”. The Archdiocese of Passo Fundo, through Caritas, proposed “the Transformation Project” which aims at transforming, training and action. With this challenge, we started the Transformation Project. The other institutions of the Catholic Church and Religious Congregations of Passo Fundo, RS joined the Transformation Project. Unanimously, we coined the motto: Care for life, Care for nature and Care for people. With this motto, the project met: “[...] the commitment and the increasingly urgent challenge to preserve and recover the environment in which we live, seeking to articulate the need to care for life, educating for the healthy coexistence of being human with nature, building alternatives to the exploitation of the environment and reducing the environmental impact, helping to build the human dignity of families, generating work and income through the recycling of materials. (Transformation Project, 2017, p. 11)".

Transformation Project is keeping alive its foundational legacy for thirteen years. It maintains itself through the support of its founding entities that created an Association, called “Associação das Entidades do Projeto Transformação.” (Association of Transformation Project Entities). It organizes its activities based on its motto. The Annual Action Plan encourages to work for the general objective and the programs. The general objective is: Bringing together legal and physical entities with the purpose of promoting activities for the preservation of the environment and social inclusion, with the main objective of care for life, care for nature and care for people.

The programs bring together all the six General guidelines of Transformation Project. One program runs more internally and the others establish several interactions and relationships with internal and external audiences, generating greater social bonds. The programs are namely: socio-environmental education, cooperativism, children and adolescents, public policies, communication and institutional marketing.

Among the different Transformation Project programs that mark the influence in Passo Fundo, integrated actions were developed along with the Cooperative programs, which are monitored by four recycling groups (RECIBELA, COOTRAEMPO, COAMA and AREVI), with Children and Adolescents. (65 children and adolescents with activities in the reverse school shift). This approach gave rise to making of the Christmas Cards. It’s a concrete action of transforming the material collected by a group of recyclers for making the Christmas Cards which were given to many. The collected materials were transformed into sheets, followed by painting, art, drawing and writing with the help of children and adolescents.

There was a letter attached, which expressed to everyone that the form of GRATITUDE IS SIMPLE, but it expresses the EFFORT AND RESULT OF THE WORK of EMANCIPATING PEOPLE'S IDEALS IN CONCRETE COMMITMENT TO LIFE AND CARE FOR THE PLANET TO BE TRANSFORMED INTO LIVED PRACTICES WHICH IS DESIRABLE TO SOCIETY, keeping alive the legacy: Care for Life, Care for Nature and Care for People.

Itomar Siviero
Training Coordinator at the Transformation Project in Passo Fundo-RS
Submitted by Nilva Rosin
JPIC contact person and represents Nucleus São José/ISJC-Brazil