Brazil

In Brazil, the organisation Projeto Saúde e Alegria (PSA) prepared the School of Community Networks through a methodology of collective creation. PSA is non-profit civil initiative that has been operating in the Brazilian Amazon since 1987, promoting and supporting participatory integrated and sustainable community development, through the use of art, recreation and popular communication.

PSA worked with young students from organisations in three states of the Legal Amazon region in Brazil (Pará, Amazonas and Acre), and the work to develop the school started with an initial field visits to sensitise members of the communities with the concept of community networks and the purpose of the school.

As dis the other schools, PSA formed an advisory committee to prepare the curricula and structure of the training, and they focused the training at the Amazon School with community communicators and defenders of the territory in the region, based on content production and also about what a community network is and how it banefit the local communities and their interests.

The first face-to-face meeting of the participants of the school happened at Pan- Amazonian Social Forum in Belem from 26-31 July 2022. The second in-person meeting took place from 13 to 16 October in Santarem, where the students received a workshop about HF RAdio and Hermes Technology developed by Rhizomatica.

The third one was held in December 2022 and the main topic was wireless community networks, including mesh and community radio technologty delivered also by Rhizomatica.

In the period between the face-to-face workshops, online mentoring was provided to the participants to present their work plans as part of the microgrant support and the development of projects during the first months of 2023. The microgrant projects are linked to web radio and community telecenters, as the interests and skills of the organisations who are part of the school are related to communication and content creation.

Local organisations that participate in the school and in a microgrant process to implement their CN projects

Contact Projeto Saúde e Alegria (PSA)

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