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There are 15 people in our Center for Studies of Social Action divided into four teams. One team does fieldwork in town, the other in the countryside. There is an editorial team responsible for the “Cadernos do CEAS” and an administrative team. CEAS, as part of the work of the Society of Jesus, attempts to involve an increasing number of lay people in its very characteristic style of work and decision making.

Our main objective is to develop political and educational groundwork orientated towards the working class, especially the unaided. In Salvador, we have tried to aid washerwomen, workers (including those in the informal economy) low-income residents in working class neighborhoods and popular church groups. In the countryside the work is with small farmers, squatters and, principally, rural laborers involved in the cultivation of coffee, cocoa and sugarcane.

We have constantly tried, with our different groups, to encourage participation, self-inititive and autonomy as a means of reverting a history of authoritarianism and social exclusion in which elites decide for the people.

With this end in view, time and resources have increasingly been directed to the work of visiting people in their homes, promoting meetings between neighbors and workers interested in solutions to their common problems, demanding communal facilities, etc. On several occasions we have also contributed to campaigns like housing and human rights.

Our intention is not to promote social work as such. It is rather to deepen the very special kind of relation that exists between the social work we represent and the public with witch we are involved.

Over the years, certain guidelines have remained valid in helping to make clear our activities:

  1. We have cultivated of a view of time as process with the persistence of someone who has experienced 450 years of history and faced the difficult transition from bitter times to those of relative calm and plenty. This without disregarding the natural rhythm of poor people, not always the same as that of political institutions;

  2. We have learned with the poor and humble the best way to contribute to mutual growth. This means that technical information must be linked to the life experience of the groups we work with;

  3. We have neither a precise and definite proposal in relation to society, nor any readymade model, believing that, whatever the project, it will only be valid and practicable if it counts on the critical participation and autonomy of the people. We are sure that any project will be suspect which does not improve the living conditions of the population at large and include their responsible participation, even wishing to appear new;

  4. We seek to be open to new issues which arise in our own groups and those with similar interests like environment, feminity, youth the condition of being black, etc.

  5. Our modest resources, both human and material, limit our possibilities of social action. On the order hand, this very fact contributes to a greater sense of realism and brings us closer to the real living conditions of the people.

    Years of experience have forced us to constantly rethink and evaluate our work. The most dramatic fact which has confronted us is the following: In a country where misery and poverty are so great, what words of hope, optimism and guidance can be offered? In dealing with groups of workers there is often the sense that it is not possible to go beyond existing limits and to understand that solutions are not at present available. At other times there is a greater sense of bearings and utopias.

    What is clear is the realization that precisely when prospects seem so scanty the time is right for the kind of reflection which can contribute new elements. What remains in this context, above all else, is the will and certainly to be present, to continue and to press onwards.

    Salvador, february 1996