On a recent trip to Scotland, the Director of Christian Aid Brazil (CAB) recognised some of Christian Aid’s priorities in the work currently being carried out at Broughton St Mary’s Parish Church.
He spoke of parishioners’ grassroots-focused work within the locality, and cooperation with other churches, faith communities, businesses, charities and non-governmental organisations, and their ‘rooted theology’.
These similarities – and the fact that their minister Graham McGeoch speaks Portuguese – led to an invitation for McGeoch to speak at a three-day conference in Brazil, organised by Christian Aid Brazil and the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace in Colombia.
Writing in this month’s parish magazine the Broughton Beacon, McGeoch outlined the work of some of those CA partners in Brazil he met during his September trip, and the important challenges they face.
We thought it would be of interest to a wider readership, and reproduce that article in part below.
Land distribution
In Brazil, CA focuses on working with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). This is one of the largest social movements in the world. It organises rural landless workers into cooperatives and pressures the Brazilian government to redistribute land. (Brazil has one of the most inequitable land distributions anywhere on the globe.)
Working across the country, MST promotes agricultural production through 400+ cooperatives, and it campaigns for rural schools, health services, agro-ecological polices, roads, and access to inclusive markets. It has helped over 350,000 families secure land and a better life.
Human rights
CA also works with the Gaspar Garcia Centre for Human Rights. The Centre works with Sao Paolo’s most vulnerable citizens to ensure they know their rights and can protect them.
With c.20 million inhabitants, Sao Paolo is the biggest city in Latin America. Here, the mega-rich and the desperately poor live side by side. More than 138,000 people here rely on selling goods on the street to make a living – including those with established market stalls and those who roam the streets selling cold drinks and snacks to make a few reals. Only about 5,000 have licences, but in 2012 the Gaspar Garcia Centre – supported by CA – won a landmark case defending the other vendors’ right to work.
The wider vision
Christian Aid Brazil works with grassroots partners, social movements, churches, faith groups, networks and alliances in order to increase CA’s leverage impact in communities and improve advocacy work at local, national and international levels.
Interfaith dialogue and rooted theology continue to be important elements of the work, going beyond the Christian faith.
To find out more about the organisation’s work, visit their website here.