A group of 15 people from the Marielle Vive Camp were at Unicamp's Geosciences Institute (IG) last week to continue with an extension project aimed at improving water security — the “Water Cycle at Marielle Vive”. The Movimento Sem Terra community, located in Valinhos (SP), had already received, in May, a team from Unicamp, which identified sensitive points regarding water and raised topics for discussion. On this first visit to the IG, it was possible to analyze the most favorable locations in the camped area for locating water tanks and the methods for this water to more easily reach the 33 base centers into which the camp is divided.
According to IG professor Jefferson Picanço, who received the group, “the extension project seeks to build, together with the campers, proposals that aim to improve the camp's water security”. According to Wilson Lopes, one of the camp leaders, the visit to the IG seeks to advance the proposal to identify the amount of water available in the area and increase the reserve volume. “Today we are experiencing great difficulty, because we do not have drinking water. The mine water is not fit for consumption. We received a water truck from Valinhos city hall with 10 thousand liters of water per day, but we suffer from a lack of water for consumption and irrigation”, says Lopes. Picanço highlights that the objective of the project is “a joint creation, or co-creation, based on the real needs of the campers, based on the principle that science is important knowledge, but is primarily at the service of people and understands and dialogues with traditional knowledge”, he highlights.
During the visit to the IG, in a workshop, problems related to the water cycle detected in previous meetings were discussed. “The discussion of these topics listed some of the problems that could result in projects to be carried out jointly by Unicamp participants and campers, such as the allocation of water resources provided by Valinhos city hall and water from sources in the camp area. We thought about the most favorable places for locating water tanks and the methods for this water to reach the entire camp more easily”, highlights Picanço.
Wilson Lopes remembers the importance of strengthening the institutional relationships that have been established between the Marielle Vive camp and Unicamp. “This has been our objective, and we have been moving firmly in this direction, even having the possibility of involving other courses such as Pedagogy, Civil Engineering, Medicine”, says Lopes. “With the Literature course, there is a proposal to carry out training with educators within the camp. We are evaluating the possibility of interaction between students and the camp”, he adds.
The Marielle Vive camp was established in 2018. Today, it brings together around 350 families, with around 100 to 120 children and teenagers. According to Lopes, there is a popular school on site with tutoring, computer classes, English and education for young people and adults. There is also a garden with organic production of vegetables, which mainly meets the camp's internal demand. They also donate to Santa Casa de Valinhos and sell at two fairs in Campinas. The water issue is, therefore, very important for the camp.
At the opening of the visit to the IG, Jefferson Picanço recalled that the proposal is to create a dialogue in which scientific discourse is not more important than knowledge passed from generation to generation. “This knowledge is together with the knowledge of science. The idea is to bring this union of knowledge together to solve a community problem,” he said. Lopes added that “there is a bridge between society and the university that is being crossed”.
The project, which is open to the academic community, has the participation of IG professor Jefferson Picanço; IG postgraduate students Henrique Santana, Matheus Busca, Diego Salvador, Bruno Puttini, Letycia Venancio, Pedro Cheliz and Isabella Barbosa; and IG undergraduate students Giovanna Tomita and Hiago Nascimento. In addition to those camped, Igor Tadeu, from the Dínamo de Engenharia Popular collective, and Thiago Monaco and Roberta Selingardi, from Tapiá Projetos Agroflorestais, were also invited to the workshop at IG. In August, there will be another meeting, this time at Acampamento Marielle vive, where the projects will be detailed and the schedule for their implementation will be drawn up, as well as the indication of other projects to be carried out in the medium term.
