Cuidando do povo do pão: organizando um espaço conversacional colaborativo-dialógico entre participantes de um projeto social no centro de São Paulo

Abstract

The objective of this study was to create a welcoming space for encounter and reflection for the group of collaborators of the social project Pão do Povo da Rua, as well as to promote bonds, collaborative action and dialogue among the participants with the purpose of expanding team awareness and autonomy. To achieve this goal, an inaugural meeting was held to warm up and strengthen group connections, 5 weekly conversational meetings following the methodology of Integrative Community Therapy (ICT circles) at the end of which the participants were interviewed individually about their experience. The meetings were held in April and May 2023 at the project's headquarters and were attended by its employees, on average 15 people. Pão do Povo da Rua is a social project that produces and distributes 3,000 loaves of bread and cakes a day, free of charge in downtown São Paulo, prepared by people who have left the streets and joined this baking training program. All meetings were recorded and transcribed. The ICT meetings were registered by the methodology developed at Associação Brasileira de Terapia Comunitária (ABRATECOM), and the interviews with participants were analyzed in the light of John Shotter's social poetics. In the circles, the themes of suffering of the community that appeared most frequently were impotence and anxiety, and when we raise the coping strategies, religiosity and spirituality appear first. We found 6 themes for the moving moments that appeared in the individual interviews: Recognize the importance of conversational agreements; See the other and strengthen interpersonal bonds; Express, change your view and accept yourself; Create a plural space of welcoming and collaboration where one learn from the other; Appreciate the lightness, playfulness and work with the body; Change in institutional and relational politics. These results demonstrate that the ICT methodology was adequate for the proposed objective, and that our objective was achieved. And they show how the methodology can be useful for organizations and teams, as well as for open communities