Working with Communities: What Brazilian Paulo Freire Has to Teach Us

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Working with Communities What Brazilian Paulo
Freire Has to Teach Us

• John Straw, M. Ed.
• Coordinator of Program Funding
• Concern America
• March 28-29, 2009

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About Concern America
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Concern America

• Concern America is an international
  development and refugee aid organization that
  provides long-term, community-based development
  and support to economically impoverished
  communities throughout the world. What
  distinguishes the work of Concern America is its
  belief that the transformation of these
  communities comes from engaging local members in
  the solutions to their problems. Concern America
  does this by training community members in
  health, environmental health, education,
  appropriate technology (e.g. potable water
  systems), and income-generation, so that the
  villagers themselves become the health care
  providers, educators, well-diggers, cooperative
  members, etc. Currently, Concern America is
  engaged in community-centered development
  projects in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador,
  Colombia, Ecuador, Mozambique, and West Africa.
• Since its establishment in 1972, Concern
  America has worked in fifteen countries on three
  continents, making a measurable difference in the
  lives of more than two million people in
  thousands of communities.

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Concern America

• Concern America personnel are professionals in
  their fields but receive no salary during their
  time of service with the organization. Their
  costs are covered by Concern America, at
  approximately 10,000 per year. This amount
  includes room and board round-trip
  transportation a small monthly stipend health
  insurance residency permits in the country of
  service and a small resettlement allowance at
  the termination of their contract.

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Paulo Freire Background
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Paulo Freire A Quick History

• Born in 1921, Recife Brazil (died 1997)
• From the 1940s till 1964, he led education and
  literacy efforts at the university and state
  levels
• Developed non-orthodox pedagogy for literacy that
  was replicated throughout Brazil
• 1964 a military coup sent him to jail, and then
  into exile from Brazil until 1979

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Paulo Freire A Quick History

• Published famous Pedagogy of the Oppressed in
  1968
• Visiting Professor at Harvard 1969
• Special Education Advisor to the World Council of
  Churches, focusing on Portuguese-speaking
  countries in Africa
• Returned to Brazil 1979
• Appointed as Secretary of Education of São Paulo
  1988

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Paulo Freire Key Principles
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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Thank God I am not a Jungian!
• - Carl Jung
• Im so delighted to find that you dont claim
  to be a disciple. My enemies are bad enough, but
  my disciples are worse.
• - John Dewey, in a letter to Myles
• Horton

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Community Needs Quiz
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Community Needs Quiz-Answers
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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Key Term Popular Education
• Popular Education is a community effort to
  acquire existing knowledge and build the new
  knowledge to shape society, so that all will have
  the opportunity to a full life.
• -Anne Hope and Sally Timmel, Training For
  Transformation

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Key Principles of Freire
• Aim of Education is Radical Transformation
• Relevant-Generative Themes Empowerment
• Dialogue
• Problem Posing and Search for Solutions
• Praxis Reflection and Action
• No Education is Neutral

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Radical Transformation
• The aim of education is Radical
  Transformation, based on the HOPE that it is
  possible to change life for the better
  (transformation). For this to happen the root of
  the problem must be addressed (radical).

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Relevant-Generative Themes Empowerment
• Relevance--people act on issues, called
  Generative Themes, about which they have strong
  feelings. The motivation to act is linked to
  emotion and the agenda for development comes from
  the people.

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Dialogue
• Dialogue--a searching together no one has all
  of the answers everyone has wisdom.

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Because dialogue is an encounter among women
  and men who name the world, it must not be a
  situation where some name on behalf of others.
• - Paulo Freire

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Problem Posing
• Problem-Posing and the search for solutions.
  Facilitator provides a framework for participants
  to consider a common problem and find solutions
  people are actively involved in the social
  construction of knowledge, naming the world, and
  developing and acting on solutions to the problem.

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• The role of the educator is to present to the
  people in challenging form the issues they
  themselves have raised in a confused form.
• - Mao Zedong

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students
  and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist
  and a new term emerges teacher-student with
  students-teachers. The teacher is no longer
  merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is
  himself taught in dialogue with the students, who
  in turn while being taught also teach. They
  become jointly responsible for a process in which
  all grow.
• - Paulo Freire

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• Praxis Reflection and Action
• Reflection/Action Process (Praxis)--
• Input - Reflection - Action

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Praxis Reflection-Action
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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• No Education is Neutral
• No Education is Neutral--education can
  domesticate people or liberate them.

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Paulo Freire Key Principles

• When I give food to the poor, they call me a
  saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they
  call me a communist.
• -Brazilian Bishop Dom Helder Camara

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Paulo Freire and Engineers Without Borders
How can Paulo Freires approach to communities
be relevant to Engineers Without Borders?
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Role of Outsiders

• Two Important Roles of Outsiders
• Listen, Facilitate Reflection/Action
• Provide expert input as necessary

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Praxis Reflection-Action
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Role of Outsiders

• Listen, Facilitate Reflection/Action
• Instead of following predetermined plans,
  leaders and people, mutually identified, together
  create the guidelines of their action.
• - Paulo Freire

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Role of Outsiders

• Provide Expert Input as Necessary
• To partner with a community to build a water
  system, bridge, etc.
• To provide funding/supplies for projects
• To act as a connection to larger world for
  information, relationships
• To share hopeful stories from the developing
  world

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Role of Outsiders

• A real humanist can be identified more by his
  trust in the people, which engages him in their
  struggle, than by a thousand actions in their
  favor without that trust.
• - Paulo Freire

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Role of Outsiders

• We can legitimately say that in the process of
  oppression someone oppresses someone else we
  cannot say that in the process of revolution
  someone liberates someone else, nor yet that
  someone liberates himself, but rather that human
  beings in communion liberate each other.
• - Paulo Freire

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Paulo Freire and Engineers Without Borders?

• Thinking about my Engineers Without Borders
  work (past, present, and future projects), and
  Paulo Freires approach to community.
• In what ways are they similar?
• In what ways are they different?
• What can Freire teach EWB?
• What can EWB teach Freire?

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Key Resources

• Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
• Hope, A., Timmel, S., Hodzi, C., Training for
  Transformation A Handbook for Community Workers
  (4 volumes)
• Horton, Myles, The Long Haul An Autobiography
• The quiz and reflection/action loop images
  found in this presentation come from Training for
  Transformation, Volume 1