Brasília, August 15, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Mrs. Maria Tereza de Souza, merchant in Acauã (PI), one of the trial cities in the Zero Hunger program, 465 kilometers from the state capital, Teresina, says that she never felt so important in her place of residence. And it's not just dumb vanity or "pabulagem," which is what people in the backlands call acts of gratuitous vanity. Her ideas have something behind them. She is one of the nine members of the Management Committee of the Mesa (Special Ministry of Food Security and Hunger Alleviation) Committee.
"I never imagined that I could be so influential in bringing about changes in this place," remarks Maria Tereza, who represents the Catholic church in the Acauã committee. The best thing is to see the results right before us, every day," she says, as she points out a young man, 27 years old, who just learned to write his whole name. Roberto Raimundo de Souza, a rural laborer, exchanged the old ink pad used by illiterates for the pride in signing his own name.
"Zero Illiteracy," which led almost 500 adults to learn how to write, was one of the programs assigned priority by the municipal management committee. " These people, with all their meetings, did more for us than many mayors," Raimundo exults.
In the course of their meetings, the committee has been discovering what the city lacks and pointing out policies to change things. At the start, whether it be in Acauã, Guaribas (PI), Boqueirão (PB), Delmiro Gouveia (AL), or Barcelona (RN), people are not comfortable with so many meetings, so much conversation, so many plans. But soon, soon, there arises the active, even emotional engagement associated with a democratic exercise that never before existed in the small towns incorporated in the Zero Hunger program.
The debate is already heated when it comes to choosing the people who will have the right to receive the emergency benefit of the Food Card program. Historically, this type of selection was always up to the mayor and his (her) assistants. Nowadays, power is shared. The Committee is made up of representatives of the Church, labor unions, civil society organizations, and the local government.
OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT OFFICES
"God spare us from things that are only in the hands of politicians here," remarks Orlando Rocha, 62 years of age, in Guaribas, another trial site of the Zero Hunger program. "Nowadays we see, close up, people who are on our side making things work without going through the mayor's office," he says, with admiration. "They don't even have to go to the mayor's office; it's right here, in a house close by, that they meet."
The experience of the Management Committee leaves a mark of democracy and participation all across the map of the Zero Hunger program. In the majority of municipalities benefitted by the program, there had never been a meeting of various social segments to discuss any type of problem or social program. "We are setting up our Committee now; people have just been trained. The entire city can really be involved," affirms Eurisélia Maia, a social worker in the local government of Barcelona, a city in Rio Grande do Norte, 100 kilometers from the state capital, Natal, with the same name as the famous Catalonian city.
In Malacacheta, in the Mucuri Valley, in Minas Gerais, Flávia Hilário Cassiano, a social worker who is a member of the municipal commission, recognizes that the mobilization will have lasting effects on the community. "In addition to new members, the program involves the police and the office of the Public Defender, who are also engaged in the fight against extreme poverty here," she relates.
Being part of the Zero Hunger Management Committee confers a position of power in the city. In the past, this was the exclusive privilege of government officeholders, such as aldermen and municipal secretaries, as well as the mayor himself, obviously.
"What is just as important as meeting the needs of those whose stomachs are growling as a result of hunger is to reinforce the instances of democracy, something that had never been contemplated before in these parts," says Raimundo Ribeiro da Silva, who is a school teacher as well as an announcer on the FM Radio Hope in Guaribas. "Here the bosses spoke, and that was that. But now the winds of change have arrived full force." (DAS)
