The Women’s Group of Suruacá, Brazil
by Alicia Craven

In her 70 years of life, Dona Martinha, a matriarch in the small Brazilian village of Suruacá, has had time to come to her own conclusions about development strategies in her community.

“We are the guinea pigs,” she says in Portuguese with a weary, good-natured sigh. “In reality, everything that we have here is through projects—the kitchen, our house for women—all resulted from projects.”

CEN is working to change this entrenched dependent, paternalistic approach to development. Doña Martinha and her Suruacá Women’s Group are partners in shaping this change.

Suruacá is a small community of about 100 families on the banks of the Tapajós River in northeastern Brazil. It is accessible to the nearest city of Santarém by twice-weekly, six-hour boat journeys. Change comes slowly. Life requires patience.

Projecto Saude e Alegria (PSA), a Brazilian NGO and development organization, first began working with this isolated community in 1987. In addition to health programs and basic infrastructure projects such as installing clean drinking water systems, PSA also helped set up the Women’s Group.

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