Fr. Jim Crowe SPS

Saint Patrick’s Missionary Society
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Fr. Jim Crowe SPS , Saint Patrick’s Missionary Society, works as Coordinator for Forum in Defence of Life in Jardim Angela, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The Region of Jardim Angela has been referred to as one the most violent areas in the world. As such, my work revolves around reducing violence and increasing the value of life by networking among various organisations in the area including police, local authorities and so on. I am involved in organising leadership training courses twice monthly on the "See, Judge, Act and Evaluate" model. The main target group is basically Jardim Angela with its 300,000 population, but ends up affecting the whole city of Sao Paulo.

As coordinator for the Forum in Defence of Life to overcome violence, we chose three areas to turn our attention to:

1. Fighting inequalities;
2. Education with quality for all;
3. Ethics in institutions, especially in politics.

My work has been in articulating actions around these three areas. In October 25-28th 2007 we held a Social Forum bringing together the south side of the city, with the theme "another periphery is possible, necessary and urgent" ending with a march for "Life and Peace" with the participation of over 10,000 people.

In education we are articulating and organising the community, having established six basic points around which to work:

1. A united system of education in the whole country with a ten-year plan;
2. School all day with professional orientation;
3. Classrooms with a maximum of 25 students;
4. Motivation of the educators or teachers;
5. Integration of the school with the local community; and
6. Decentralization of the coordinators or organizations to be nearer the root problems.

In the area of ethics, we are currently elaborating an observatory with indices to accompany government and institutions, to be able to evaluate results, positive or negative.

The happy result of all this has been a very obvious decline in murders in the area falling from 120 per 100.000 in 1997 to 30 per 100.000 in 2007.

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