Brazilian Beach Community Thrives with Help of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

April 30, 2012 - PRLog -- Ipswich, Mass. – Harvesting sea algae for use in food and beauty products is not a new industry.  It is new, however, for the 33 families who comprise the Maceió Christian Base Community in northeastern Brazil. With the help of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, members of this impoverished beachfront settlement have devised a cooperative method of cultivating algae on “reefs” constructed from plastic tubing, harvesting the algae with communal fishing boats and packaging it for a growing local market.  

A Christian Base Community – families that live and work together in accordance with the Gospel – liberates its members from economic exploitation and minimizing effects of poverty.  For the past 50 years, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have empowered the people of Maceió through Bible study, community organizing, educational programs, financial assistance and business savvy. Establishing cooperatives such as the Association of Cultivators of Algae of Maceió (otherwise known as ACALMA) is part of the Sisters’ strategy to help indigenous peoples prevent developers from seizing native lands.

In addition to the algae cooperative and a small fishing enterprise, the Maceió  community survives on income earned from a home-based lace making industry. Before the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur helped the community’s women form an artisan cooperative, individuals sold their handwork piecemeal to intermediary buyers. The women were losing out on proceeds when intermediaries marked up the lace for sale in city markets and exported it overseas. With a more business-savvy system in place, the lace makers of Maceió now earn a living wage equal to the value of their products.

“When systems are put in place so that impoverished people are valued and encouraged to participate in our larger sphere of economies, the entire world is stronger,” said Sister Mary Alice McCabe, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur team working in Maceió.

Illegal land appropriation is a significant issue in developing nations with a high percentage of indigenous, impoverished populations. In such instances, viable local industries help keep at bay developers and luxury hotels. Since many resort developments are staging grounds for sex trafficking and sex tourism, young people of impoverished families become easy prey and are at risk for sexual exploitation. Continuing to build on the success of the Maceió algae and lace making cooperatives is crucial to the lives of the community’s children.

For more photos and video clips about the lives of the people in the Maceió Christian Base Community, visit http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs020/1103923442549/ar...

Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are an international religious Congregation of women, founded by St. Julie Billiart (1751-1816) in Amiens, France in 1804.  We are committed to making known God’s goodness through education in a variety of ministries. We serve on five continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. We work to change lives by “our fundamental commitment to stand with our sisters and brothers who live in poverty and accompany them in their struggle.” We staff offices/centers in Rome, ITALY, Namur, BELGIUM, and Ipswich, MA, USA. We maintain a web site at http://www.sndden.org