AÇÃO PASTORAL COMO PRÁTICA DE ECONOMIA SOLIDÁRIA E GESTÃO SOCIAL

Abstract

This experience report focuses on the work of the Praesidium Nossa Senhora de Fátima, a group linked to the Legion of Mary, located in Parque São Lucas, in the eastern zone of the city of São Paulo. The experience, built over nearly twenty years, articulates spirituality, community care, and collective action within a territory marked by inequalities, but also by networks of solidarity and resistance. The aim of this paper is to systematize this trajectory in light of the principles of the solidarity economy and social management, as discussed in the Specialization in Solidarity Economy, Innovation and Social Management (ESIGS). Based on the lived experience of one of the group’s members and the collective reflections developed during the course, the study sought to recognize practices such as home visits, support for bereaved families, active listening, and leadership training as expressions of self-management, care economy, territoriality, and popular education. The discussion is grounded in the contributions of Tenório (1998), Singer (2018), and Laville (2006), who address social management as a participatory process and the solidarity economy as a sociopolitical and pedagogical alternative. The adopted methodology values situated knowledge, produced through practice and through exchanges between popular and academic forms of knowledge. Among the challenges identified are the struggle for the effective implementation of the São Lucas – Linhas Corrente Municipal Park, generational renewal, and institutional invisibility. The experience reaffirms the role of grassroots community practices as legitimate pathways to the construction of the common good, strengthening citizenship and social justice in peripheral territories.