Introduction

Candomblé priestess and environmental activist, Valdina Pinto, helped organize a remarkable environmental education program in the city of Salvador, Bahia in northeastern Brazil. The program, called Memorial Pirajá, is based in several poor and working-class neighborhoods surrounding a large nature reserve and combines leadership development, anti-racist pedagogy, citizenship education and environmental preservation.

Operated by the Centro Educacional Ambiental São Bartolomeu (CEASB, the Saint Bartholomew Center for Environmental Education), the program teaches environmental awareness through an integrated focus on the well-being of the park, the surrounding neighborhoods and the people who live there.

The culture and history of the communities surrounding the park – the stories people tell, the games children play, the herbs harvested from the woods, as well as the condition of the communities’ roads and sewage systems – are as much a part of the environment of the area as the rivers, and waterfalls and old-growth trees in the park itself. Valdina and her colleagues in Memorial Pirajá, devised a variety of activities to help residents of all ages become more actively involved in protecting, interpreting and developing the resources of the park and the neighborhoods in a sustainable and respectful way.