Out of Brazil: Miraculous Story of Pintadas

The Pintadas Project

​The absence of having public policies held back the people of Brazilian Northeast until the people of the municipality of Pintadas demanded their rights in 1980s.  The Catholic Church, Basic Ecclesiastic Communities (CEBs), a progressive  grassroots organizing movement partnered with civil society organizations in Brazil and other countries, creating a mighty force for a pioneering experience that is highly successful: The Pintadas Project.  This brought together innovative social technologies for coexistence with the semi-arid region.  Construction of water storage combined with techniques for managing the use of water and producing inputs for periods of drought.  The Pintadas Networked formed in 1999 developed programs to improve the social and economic empowerment of women, the social inclusion of youth through culture, encouraging associations, collaboration and solidarity economic, water, food and nutrition security of vulnerable families and the sustainability of family farming.  They are the first city in the Northeast to reach 100% of rural household with water collection. Women's leadership played and important role on past and present achievements, bringing people together for dialogue and political participation: from the election of one of them to become their mayor and to turn water issues into public policies.  The women fight in defense of their water, their environment, towards economic autonomy, against violence and towards a greater political participation at local, regional and national levels, and being leaders in the global women's networks and movement.  

Leader Lourivania Soares Santos is a journalist, master and doctor of Culture and Society, parliamentary advisor in the Commissions for the Defense of Women's Rights and human Right and Public Safety.  She is a feminist and solidarity economy activist, a Women's Rights Counselor for the state of Bahia,and one of the  coordinators of the Brazilian Grassroots Women Resilience Practitioners Platform, articulated by the Rede Pintadas.  They are linked to the Hauirou Commission, an international grassroots women's organization.  Lourivania will attend the UN Commission on the Status of Women representing Hauirou Commission, through the Rede Pintadas, she develops actions and research in defense of the semi-airid region, where she addresses issues of the right to water and environmental resilience.