Porteiras: empatia e filantropia comunitária na Baixada Maranhense

By Diane Pereira Sousa*

The clock is the sky. At five in the morning Betinha begins her journey. A coffee in the pot releases the first scent of the day. Bodies still sleep in that little tijupá. In the backyard, the roosters start to crow: it's a new clock appearing, time on this piece of land is not imperative, it speaks softly, it's calm and succinct, like the walk of a lowlander. Betinha is time itself. She is never alone on the way to the farm, fellow travelers join the walk. There are varied songs and stories, exchanges of knowledge, there is an invisible network cooperating; There is already a name for what they do, but on that piece of land, any classification cannot be sustained, there will always be a word missing. Of science little, of sapience everything.

There are no walls, the cocazinho is as if it were a single backyard. It's not touristy, but some things stand out: a cashew tree that's been there forever, oven houses, rivers, bush, a lot of bush. In this place, even the wind teaches. In the big city there are doors, there the harmony comes from the gates. Betinha doesn't know it yet, but her workforce is at the core of organic development in that territory, together with DPreta, Jaila, Tanmoça, TanNeide, Natália, they created the invisible network of transformation. They have been organizing and feeding the chain of opportunity and production that exists there for a long time.

There is, within the community, a focus on equality: the flour that goes to DPreta also goes to TanMoca; In the shadows that the cashew tree produces, the hands of the now rest. None of this would be possible if they didn't allow themselves to be a community. It's not their tijupá that unites them, it's their feelings for each other.

When we think about assets within community philanthropy, we are closely relating stocks. Solidarity defines community praxis. It is an active search for the importance of having the territory and those who walk on its ground within the transformative process. It's not just about recognizing community-based organizations as drivers of philanthropy, we're talking about why these organizations do philanthropy.

An elephant will be an elephant anywhere in the world, but a community will not.

In Cocazinho, solidarity is everyday life, it is like a precise force, people have built themselves in this way, this is an element for the construction of a philanthropic sense, it is not help out of absolute necessity, it is an act of a common unity in around a space to which we feel we belong. Empathy increases this degree of belonging because I go beyond the fence, I am not only in the space with the other, but I am also in the other.

Baixada Maranhense is a gateway with different dimensions. With people, resources, institutions, inequalities and potential. This gate connects and reveals that everyone here, with or without speaking, is touching the ground in community philanthropy.

* Superintendent of the Baixada Maranhense Community Institute

Originally published in: https://cutt.ly/3fDj2AD

Porteiras: empathy and community philanthropy in Baixada Maranhense