Promoting health and happiness in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

With the motto “Health, happiness of the body. Happiness, health of the soul”, the Health & Happiness Project (PSA) works to promote integrated and sustainable community development in parts of the Brazilian Amazon. PSA grew out of local workers' personal experience in collaborating with communities and the need for sustainable actions for their future development. PSA was established as a not-for-profit organization in 1987. It started off by implementing strategies that would increase the health status of the population, which was identified as the biggest challenge, to then extend to other areas of development. Education, training and community participation were key elements of the project's actions, which included basic sanitation, reproductive health and child health, technical assistance in agricultural practices and youth empowerment through communications, among others. Once the health structure was established, the work moved on to new priorities related to education, economic production, protection of the environment and community management in the medium and long terms. The project's success has helped to institutionalize the practices and today it reaches a total of approximately 5,000 families distributed across 150 rural communities in the mid- and low-Amazon region. (Promotion & Education, 2007, (2): pp 85-87)