we have chosen five municipalities as pilot municipalities of the Healthy Municipalities Project They are located in "Central Agreste" region (the Agreste region lies between the coastal rainforest region and instate semiarid lands of Northeast We took into consideration the economic situation the existence or lack of similar projects and the willingness of the municipality to collaborate These 5 municipalities are between 110 to 130km from the state capital of Recife All have agriculture and livestock farming as the major industry The total population of these 5 municipalities is 97,295 (in the year 2000) and their Human Development Index is 0.588 (in 2000) Their HDI is practically at the level considered for low-income countries (0.554 in the 2000 Human Development Report) which has previously have worked with Healthy Municipalities aided by the Ministry of Health is also integrated as one of the pilot municipalities of the project We then selected pilot communities in each municipality we chose one life cycle as a theme for each municipality through interviews and existing information we selected one community from each pilot municipality - the community with an accumulation of social capital relevant to the selected life cycle we selected the youth life cycle theme in Bonito We selected one pilot community where there were a large number of youth groups Figure5 : Localization of Pilot Municipalities In the concept of Healthy Municipalities, health would be improved not only through improvements to health care services, but also by the effects of various factors in everyday life (q.v. Figure 2) We call this the "Idea of Comprehensive Health" we should not treat health and life within only a few sectors such as health care education or industries; we should treat them more widely and cross-sectionally the framework of the life cycle comes to the fore Thinking in terms of life cycle phases such as children we can treat health and life in a more comprehensive fashion Our Healthy Municipalities Project proposes the life cycle framework and performs trial runs of specific policy-making and intersectoral cooperation This is just a gateway of activities and it is possible for each pilot municipality to alter or amplify the life cycle themes later on The life cycle themes of each municipality are cited below Barra de Guabiraba The life cycle theme : adult men Camocim de São Felix The life cycle theme : adult women and children Sairé The life cycle theme : elderly São Joaquim do Monte The life cycle theme : adult women and children Itambé The life cycle theme : infants municipality and community development takes a long time All precedent cases of municipality and community building generally show that there are no concrete outcomes at first but they become gradually clear in the process of 3 to 5 years Particularly when involving the development of human resources and social capital (capacity development) it is important to support development with patience as well as considerable time and effort in supporting "municipality and community development" through a technical cooperation project that calls for certain results within limited time the Healthy Municipalities Project has chosen as its objective the creation and implementation of "mechanisms" that may be developed and concretized during the project period "Mechanisms" are social devices that permit continuity in the collaborated activities of residents and local government There are three different levels on which where these activities are implemented Figure6 : Mechanism of Healthy Municipalities residents freely discuss and take an active part in the undertakings Facilitators have the role of encouraging community gatherings and leading meetings "Facilitators" work in cooperation with "supervisors" (mentioned later) to promote community activities always seeking to have new members participate in them The participation of "collaborators of healthy municipalities" who help facilitators and supervisors is also indispensable there is EAPPPS (Center for Healthy Public Policy Articulation and Promotion) for the integration and coordination of public policies giving priority to health and life Supervisors coordinate and link activities from the micro and mid levels here these include the intersectoral adjustment of public policies that reflect the concerns of the residents the training of the human resources necessary for Healthy Municipalities implementation and evaluation of community activities the coordination of federal and state government programs or projects to meet the community's needs participation in the development planning of municipalities On the macro level (group of adjacent municipalities) there arise discussions on broad-based common issues that can be more effectively resolved together than by an individual municipality as the referral center for "Healthy Municipalities" the UFPE trains the necessary human resources for the "mechanisms" and lend technical support to the activities The UFPE also hosts the network of healthy municipalities and diffuses the "mechanisms" to other regions the state government has introduced "Healthy Municipalities" in its development strategy and offers information on various public programs or projects to the EAPPPS of each municipality to support the planning of healthy public policies In the course of the discussions on the intervention method of the Healthy Municipalities Project in communities the central issue was how a community becomes empowered (how is it possible to improve the autonomy of the community effectively) There are two fundamental problems in this region people who live in Northeast region of Brazil have historically leaned heavily upon the hope of assistance from patrons the notion of autonomy within the community is fragile it is desirable for the community to solve their problems themselves through the empowerment process but there is difficulty in achieving this with community efforts alone due to the serious problems stemming from poverty Dealing with these two problems simultaneously is daunting we need to take a different path from conventional ways we have developed a method that seeks to make the best use of Existing Potentials (utilizing the abilities of one person who is good at making things etc.) in the community to set up goals that can be accomplished by the community itself We believe that their autonomy can be enhanced by achieving these goals (The traditional approach has been a "cause-seeking approach" that analyzes the cause of problems to be solved.) The development of project method is based on the SOJO (System-Oriented Joyful Operation) model developed by Japanese researcher Toshihiro IWANAGA and others people feel a sense of accomplishment through the implementation of small actions through joint efforts boosting their self-respect and lending continuity for further actions with confidence This name derives from the image of bamboo: Flexibility - flexible application of the method is one aspect; the firm roots of bamboo - a sound base in reality and also symbolizes the collaboration of Brazil with the Orient JICA website uses cookies to provide you with a better service.By closing this message or just continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies in our Privacy Policy RSS FeedsRSS Feeds