Ute Craemer

Alliance for Childhood, Brasil

Summary

The Monteazul community is working in several slums in the mega city of Sao Paulo and after 25 years of work it is well know and recognized by the authorities for being a neighborhood with hardly any violence or drug addiction and dealing. How was the developmental process during these years?� We can summarize this saying that the outer transformation and the inner transformation goes hand in hand. The favelas transformed from a favela which is a term symbolic of stench, disease, fear, violence and crime to a well organized neighborhood with facilities as creches, workshops, cultural centers, health care center, libraries, school for the handicapped, adult training etc tending for approximately 1500 children and thousands and thousands of patients.

But what might be more important is that the inner situation of the slum dwellers changed from miserable people without any self esteem to human beings which discovered in themselves the force of transformation and human dignity. And this transforming process is not a one-way process. Like many co workers express it: "I dont know who is benefiting more, the children and the slumdwellers or myself. I have the feeling that the more I work and live together with these children, mothers and adults in general the more I grow myself, getting more comprehensive, more tolerant, more full filled.� This transformation is not only visible in the external way (slum sanitation through sewage systems and secure housing construction) not even only in the skill training but also in the whole atmosphere of the slum.� So we feel that the social work of Monteazul, and many others of course, can be a modern initiation place where you feel successes but also obstacles.

Thus by recognizing and suffering with your limits and weaknesses but also by overcoming them at least partly you are passing through an initiation process like formerly in older cultures the initiates did. But this initiation is occurring in normal, every day life if it is perceived as such consciously.

We base ourselves on a work philosophy called anthropososphy which is a spiritual science developed by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. So the vision permeating the work with the children and adults is to respect the human being not only as a physical and psychic being but also as a destiny -carrying spiritual being.

There is a lot of outreach work done by Monteazul for instance the Alliance for childhood in Brazil was born out of the impulse to connect with others persons with similar aims.� For a tree to carry fruits� it needs good earth and water, air and sun� For a human being to open and unfold itself� it needs nourishment, protection and an open heart� which gives it love� And a person who helps it grow.� Every person!!

This Social art develops in the field of constructive tension between our spiritual world and everyday reality. We can say that social art relies on five pillars:

1) the pillar of education, or rather, of child development;

2) the pillar of self-education: openness, optimism, courage, and conscience;

3) the pillar of a social entity, meaning the structure and knowledge of its laws of development;

4) the pillar of inclusion and mixture of origins and different human qualities;

5) the pillar of tri-sector partnerships (state sector, private sector, and the sector of non-governmental organizations that incorporates culture and education) and the knowledge of the laws that govern each sector.

This social initiative consists of a firm base in social reality, a vision of the spiritual world, and of the above five pillars of implementation. Obviously this is a vivid process, not static, and in truth an art that configures the initiative’s role in life, work, and society. Hence the initiative forms an equilibrium that fluctuates between the real and the ideal, between rigid form and chaos, unity and multiplicity.