In 1987, World Vision Brazil (WVB) began community organizing work in the cities of Belo Horizonte and Natal. Belo Horizonte is a city of nearly 3 million people, the third-largest city in Brazil. It is about 210 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro in the Serra do Espinhaco mountains, and has a principle economy based in the mining of gold, iron and manganese.
One of the squatter settlements (called "favellas") in which WVB decided to do organizing was the community of Taquaril. Taquaril was obviously a community in distress. A town of canvas and cardboard shacks, ten thousand families of about fifty thousand residents had moved into this "invaded area" between 1987 and 1991. It had essentially been ignored by the two mayors and city administrations of Belo Horizonte during that period. In April 1991, Valdemar Gomes Silva was assigned by WV Brazil to begin organizing in Taquaril. In just a few months, he conducted individual meetings with more than two thousand adults and youth residents. As well, he held meetings with city administrators in the fields of housing, health care, schooling and public transportation and with pastors of Taquaril churches (the only social organizations in the favellas). Out of those meetings with the residents of Taquaril, Valdemar began conducting house meetings.
The people organized to address these immediate needs. Within one year, they had won concessions from the Belo Horizonte government to provide bus service to the community, to install street paving in highly-trafficked areas, to get telephone lines and two public telephones installed. But the most substantial organizing focused on getting the city to deal with the drainage of the creek that could both cause the flooding of much of Taquaril and was filled with highly polluted water and human waste. Through a series of meetings with the appropriate government officials, the people of Taquaril were finally successful in getting the creek converted into an enclosed sewer that both channeled the water and removed the waste without the risk of human contamination.
In 1993, Valdemar resigned to accept a professorial position in community organizing at the local university. He was replaced by two seasoned organizers, Maria Joana de Oliveria and James Andris Pinheiro. By this time, the now-mature and experienced Taquaril community leaders had gotten the city to pave all the arterial and primary streets of the favellas and to partner with Habitat for Humanity in the replacing of the canvas shacks with adequate permanent housing. But as Joana and James met with the people in their action teams and house groups, it became clear that the people still saw as their main problem the matter of water. Trucks were bringing water into the community to sell to the residents at high prices. And there still was no source of clean, plentiful, bacteria-free water for the residents. It was clear that the permanent solution would be the building of three large water reservoirs, one for each of the three sectors of Taquaril. But how were they to be built?
As the result of countless individual and house meetings conducted not only by Joana and James (the organizers) but by hundreds of emerging leaders of Taquaril and then three sector meetings, the people made the decision to confront the city government with the demand that they supply clean, sanitary and adequate water to Taquaril through the building of three reservoirs. Out of that decision, the people chose specific residents to be their negotiating team with the government. That team was trained by Joana and James how to bargain with a government entity in a powerful yet respectful way. Then, the negotiations began.
After three months of negotiating with the appropriate government officials, the city government and the Taquaril community organization jointly announced a binding legal agreement. The city would provide all the material, supplies and equipment for the building of the three reservoirs; the people would construct the three bases; the city would build and then install the actual reservoirs on the bases, would hook up the reservoirs to the city's water system, they would maintain the reservoirs, pumps and equipment in perpetuity, and would treat and test the water on an agreed-upon schedule to maintain its purity. A final stipulation insisted upon by the people was that the Taquaril workers would get to keep all the tools supplied by the city so that they could start up their own businesses. The victory celebration of the people of Taquaril was something to behold!
The agreement was reached in July 1993. By September 1993, the people had completed construction of the first base; by January 1994 the second base was done; and by April 1994 the third base was complete. The city installed and hooked up the reservoirs they had built elsewhere and had shipped to Taquaril. And by June 1994, the first water poured from the reservoirs into the homes of the people of Taquaril.
Emboldened by the success they had experienced with the reservoir, the people's organization of Taquaril then took on the Belo Horizonte school system. At the time, the Taquaril children had to ride a bus to the nearest school that was an hour's drive from the favellas. An accountability meeting was held in the community of nearly 400 people with the school officials. The result was that a school building was built in Taquaril by the government and opened for classes in 1994. As of 1995, it offered classes through the fifth grade (7 to 14 years old), with three shifts of children. The building is in use twelve hours a day.
That success led to another action - pressuring for adequate health care. The Brazilian "Statute of Children and Adolescents" clearly requires the city government to assume responsibility for the health care of all the city's children. So the organized people of Taquaril began pressuring for such health care. The government built a health clinic that now provides daily health care (with a doctor in residence) to the people.
All of this came as the result of the people of Taquaril organizing to use their relational power to get the agencies of their city to work for the people rather than for themselves!
