A Discussion with Thereza Kaiser Baptista, Technical Assistant, Pastoral da Criança, Curitiba, Parana, Brazil
With: Thereza Kaiser Baptista Berkley Center Profile
June 12, 2014
Background: As
part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in June 2014 undergraduate student Adam
Barton interviewed Thereza Kaiser Baptista, a technical assistant working in
Pastoral da Criança’s national headquarters in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. In this
interview, Baptista reflects on his time at Pastoral da Criança and dental
health in Brazil.
How
did you come to work for Pastoral da Criança?
I am a dentist by trade and, after working 23 years in both public and private practices, was invited by Pastoral’s Dr. Eduardo to join a team of 10 dentists who were creating a new leader training on oral health. I stayed in this position from 1993 up until 2000, at which point I came to work directly for the Archdiocese of Curitiba to assist in their oral health work during Celebration of Life events. Then, in late 2006, I was elected coordinator of the Archdiocese of Curitiba to oversee five sectors for Pastoral. I finally made it to the national team in 2008 at the invitation of Dr. Nelson [Arns Neumann] to take charge of the Leader Training Days, and have been in charge of training multipliers and leaders ever since.
Tell me about the evolution of Pastoral and its work as you have seen it over the past 20 years.
Over the years, Pastoral’s focus has evolved based on the needs of the nation and in accord with a changing world. When Pastoral began back in 1983, it began with people who did not know how to read or write. The face of Pastoral was Dr. Zilda [Arns Neumann], and it was she—not written materials or computer tracking systems—that was on the ground teaching and evaluating. She went into the communities and taught them how to make oral rehydration solution out of sugar, salt, and water; she taught leaders how to measure and weigh and track.
Then, as Pastoral grew, leaders began to need to track a growing number of children, and coordinators needed ways to train larger numbers of leaders.
So the Leader’s Guide for training and Leader’s Journal for tracking developed out of necessity. From there, we see a shifting focus onto technical knowledge about the human body, common disorders in pregnancy, and, beginning in 2011, the first thousand days of life. But the same base has always been there: we have always taken care of life in its first thousand days, have always emphasized our actions for pregnant women and knowledge of the gestation process.
What has always stayed the same, though, is Pastoral’s focus on the individual, on the role of faith, and on the basic methodology of see, judge, act, evaluate, and celebrate that is present in all of its actions.
What does the ideal Pastoral training look like?
The ideal training is to work through the 15 steps elaborated in the Leader’s Guide, one step per day, with each step taking three and a half hours depending on the number of trainees present. With a maximum of 15 trainees, this allows time for an interactive and meaningful training in which future leaders are able to ask questions, share experiences, and respond to discussion prompts.
We must always adapt, however, to the needs of the community in which we work. Our leaders have families to care for, work to do, and homes to clean. When we get out into the most rural of areas where a trainer is forced to take a two day boat ride in order to arrive in a community, this training may need to be condensed down to four or so days with four to five steps in each.
Thinking of locations like this, we created leader-trainers who live in the communities and do the work of regular leaders, but also train new leaders in his community. This leader must, of course, be literate, so we created a literacy training course for illiterate leaders. Only after years of this program did the government come in and decide to set up their own national literacy program, following in our footsteps.
Outside of these in-person trainings, future leaders have homework that they must complete. For example, they must visit a pregnant woman in their community during one stage and a public clinic during the next. Trainers are heavily instructed in teaching methodologies surrounding dialogue facilitation, learning objectives, and spiritual practices.
If you could share any one message about Pastoral with an international audience, what would you say?
I would say that Pastoral is not only for those who are impoverished. It brings guidance not just for those who are in need, but for those who belong to all social classes. When you talk about how a child develops or when you advise a pregnant woman on breastfeeding, you realize that these are realities that exist for everyone around the world.
When you talk about how peace at home influences the development of the human person, you are not just speaking of the poor; you see that violence exists in all social classes and that education and nutrition are valued across all levels of society.
Pastoral does not just exist to visit to visit the homes of the poor, but rather to save the lives of children around the world. Pastoral provides guidance that goes beyond basic knowledge—beyond the theoretical and scientific—and instead brings a spirituality that can serve everyone.
To what do you attribute the success of Pastoral?
First, I would recognize the incredible charisma of Dr. Zilda; I do not think that anyone else could have accomplished what she did. Every day I stop to admire her persistence, her hard work, and how she would never shy away from doing what needed to be done.
Another side of Pastoral’s success has to do with the time in which it came into existence. The Church, in that era, was well-positioned to make a real impact on the lives of the poor, and Pastoral had all the support that the Church had to offer.
The final thing that I would point to is the natural solidarity of the Brazilian people, which helped greatly in Pastoral’s reception. Pastoral never tried to impose beliefs, but rather win over the people from their hearts. In this way, Pastoral filled a hole that the government could not and engaged a nation in the process.
The essence of Pastoral is the people that it serves—it is a human base. It is about building the self-esteem of each individual.
I am a dentist by trade and, after working 23 years in both public and private practices, was invited by Pastoral’s Dr. Eduardo to join a team of 10 dentists who were creating a new leader training on oral health. I stayed in this position from 1993 up until 2000, at which point I came to work directly for the Archdiocese of Curitiba to assist in their oral health work during Celebration of Life events. Then, in late 2006, I was elected coordinator of the Archdiocese of Curitiba to oversee five sectors for Pastoral. I finally made it to the national team in 2008 at the invitation of Dr. Nelson [Arns Neumann] to take charge of the Leader Training Days, and have been in charge of training multipliers and leaders ever since.
Tell me about the evolution of Pastoral and its work as you have seen it over the past 20 years.
Over the years, Pastoral’s focus has evolved based on the needs of the nation and in accord with a changing world. When Pastoral began back in 1983, it began with people who did not know how to read or write. The face of Pastoral was Dr. Zilda [Arns Neumann], and it was she—not written materials or computer tracking systems—that was on the ground teaching and evaluating. She went into the communities and taught them how to make oral rehydration solution out of sugar, salt, and water; she taught leaders how to measure and weigh and track.
Then, as Pastoral grew, leaders began to need to track a growing number of children, and coordinators needed ways to train larger numbers of leaders.
So the Leader’s Guide for training and Leader’s Journal for tracking developed out of necessity. From there, we see a shifting focus onto technical knowledge about the human body, common disorders in pregnancy, and, beginning in 2011, the first thousand days of life. But the same base has always been there: we have always taken care of life in its first thousand days, have always emphasized our actions for pregnant women and knowledge of the gestation process.
What has always stayed the same, though, is Pastoral’s focus on the individual, on the role of faith, and on the basic methodology of see, judge, act, evaluate, and celebrate that is present in all of its actions.
What does the ideal Pastoral training look like?
The ideal training is to work through the 15 steps elaborated in the Leader’s Guide, one step per day, with each step taking three and a half hours depending on the number of trainees present. With a maximum of 15 trainees, this allows time for an interactive and meaningful training in which future leaders are able to ask questions, share experiences, and respond to discussion prompts.
We must always adapt, however, to the needs of the community in which we work. Our leaders have families to care for, work to do, and homes to clean. When we get out into the most rural of areas where a trainer is forced to take a two day boat ride in order to arrive in a community, this training may need to be condensed down to four or so days with four to five steps in each.
Thinking of locations like this, we created leader-trainers who live in the communities and do the work of regular leaders, but also train new leaders in his community. This leader must, of course, be literate, so we created a literacy training course for illiterate leaders. Only after years of this program did the government come in and decide to set up their own national literacy program, following in our footsteps.
Outside of these in-person trainings, future leaders have homework that they must complete. For example, they must visit a pregnant woman in their community during one stage and a public clinic during the next. Trainers are heavily instructed in teaching methodologies surrounding dialogue facilitation, learning objectives, and spiritual practices.
If you could share any one message about Pastoral with an international audience, what would you say?
I would say that Pastoral is not only for those who are impoverished. It brings guidance not just for those who are in need, but for those who belong to all social classes. When you talk about how a child develops or when you advise a pregnant woman on breastfeeding, you realize that these are realities that exist for everyone around the world.
When you talk about how peace at home influences the development of the human person, you are not just speaking of the poor; you see that violence exists in all social classes and that education and nutrition are valued across all levels of society.
Pastoral does not just exist to visit to visit the homes of the poor, but rather to save the lives of children around the world. Pastoral provides guidance that goes beyond basic knowledge—beyond the theoretical and scientific—and instead brings a spirituality that can serve everyone.
To what do you attribute the success of Pastoral?
First, I would recognize the incredible charisma of Dr. Zilda; I do not think that anyone else could have accomplished what she did. Every day I stop to admire her persistence, her hard work, and how she would never shy away from doing what needed to be done.
Another side of Pastoral’s success has to do with the time in which it came into existence. The Church, in that era, was well-positioned to make a real impact on the lives of the poor, and Pastoral had all the support that the Church had to offer.
The final thing that I would point to is the natural solidarity of the Brazilian people, which helped greatly in Pastoral’s reception. Pastoral never tried to impose beliefs, but rather win over the people from their hearts. In this way, Pastoral filled a hole that the government could not and engaged a nation in the process.
The essence of Pastoral is the people that it serves—it is a human base. It is about building the self-esteem of each individual.
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