Pachamama onlus has been alongside the Alagoas sem terra since its birth. During their stay in Alagoas, the founding members met and repeatedly participated in the activities of the Pastoral Commission of the Earth (CPT), an entity that is part of the Brazilian Catholic Church and which is responsible for providing support to rural and semi-earth workers.
In particular, the CPT deals with raising awareness of the rights of rural workers (many work in conditions of exploitation or even slavery without being aware of them or knowing their rights) and supporting the families of semi-land workers.
The sem terra are a typical expression of Brazilian society; these are women and men who are fighting for the implementation of the land reform law approved in the 1980s and still largely disregarded. The agrarian reform in Brazil provides that the lands belonging to the large landowners and that are not used to produce fruit or for the breeding of animals (according to data from the "Atlas da terra Brasil" of 2015 there are about 175.9 million hectares unproductive in Brazil) are bought or expropriated by the state and distributed to people who want to use them to cultivate them. However, being the land the main symbol of power in Brazilian society and being the very powerful landowner lobby, in recent years the land reform has made very small steps in the direction of social equity and this despite over 14 years in government. there is the PT (partido dos trabalhadores) of President Luis Ignacio da Silva (Lula) and now of President Dilma Rousseff for whom great hopes were placed.
The struggle to obtain a plot of land for the families who decide to assert this right of theirs is very difficult because they find themselves clashing with very strong powers and in this context the work of the CPT is inserted, which supports them from a point of organizational and logistic view; these people have almost nothing, they also need nylon to build the shacks with which they occupy the lands they seek to obtain. In addition, legal and technical support is provided (the CPT has a team of agronomists who accompany the workers and provide them with advice and help regarding cultivation methods).
Having experienced first hand the goodness and effectiveness of the work of the CPT, the founders of Pachamama decided to devote themselves to the dissemination of the work of this organization and to help it in economic and logistical terms.
Over the years the Pachamama partners have helped the CPT to buy an off-road vehicle in order to have access to the semi-land communities that are located in the most difficult to reach places, they have organized some dissemination events in Turin and its province following which some people have joined the association, but above all they have implemented some projects in Alagoas.
The first in the "Health" area; among the founding members there are a professor of the faculty of nursing sciences and two graduate nurses who provided some workers in the camps accompanied by the CPT with a course on primary care so that they could meet some health needs without having to go to hospitals or health facilities; this is because the camps are often located in isolated areas and to reach the nearest inhabited center it takes hours to walk. With the help of a manager identified among the members of a semi-land settlement accompanied by the CPT, this project, which has taken the name of "semeadores de saùde", is bringing significant benefits to the communities that use it.
Other projects have been developed in the area of ​​education such as the construction of a school and the payment of the costs for setting up the same in a camp in the municipality of Murici or support for other existing "traveling schools".