Social

Why we choose São Carlos 8

São Carlos’s city, which has 238.950 citizens (SOURCE: BGE 2015) in the interior of the Brasilian State of São Paulo, was affected by dengue epidemic during the summer, between January and May, situation that have been getting worse by the years.

To justify the importance and necessity of the non-toxic repellent development and also to awareness about means of disease preventions, we seek to intervene in a social and educative way in a needy local community, owner of characteristics which propitiate the disease occurrence.

The chosen neighborhood was São Carlos VIII, place were exist a large trashy accumulation on the streets that enable the water accumulation and, consequently, a huge proliferation of mosquitoes, directly affecting the population quality of life.

Our target was to reach and affect youth with the development of a breakthrough activity that goes out of our lab benches and takes us to improve our artistic side! Come check us out and have fun!

Figure 1. This was the scene of our theater.

In 2015, Brazil faced a dengue epidemic, and São Carlos was not different (Wiki link). Despite the campaigns to encourage people to take action for disease prevention (which mainly consists in eliminating sites with accumulated water, where Aedes aegypti mosquitoes can reproduce), this effort is ineffective in combating the disease. So, we had the insight to contribute to awareness of local population, showing that there are people working on developing alternative (and possibly more effective) solutions to this problem.

Dengue is an urban disease and capable of reaching all social classes. Although wealthy neighborhoods have less mosquitoes breeding grounds and richest population has access to improved health services, São Carlos was ravaged by the disease as a whole. Then, we choose a neighborhood that represents the living conditions of the majority of the population as the target to our intervention. We chose the neighborhood São Carlos 8, which faces the problems that can increase dengue cases (such as the accumulation of waste, for example). Also, this neighborhood has a social organization that assists education of 6-13 years children in the neighborhood, which was very receptive to our proposal. Thus, we decided to conduct our activities at the community center PROVIM Dom Luciano de Almeida.

Our first step was a contact with social entrepreneurship projects at UFSCar who could help us develop our activity. In this manner, we found the Enactus UFSCar, a group of students that carry-out educational activities with children in many neighborhoods of São Carlos, including São Carlos’ 8th. The Enactus UFSCar, with its social contacts, gave us the opportunity to enter the lives of children. Thus, it was possible to gain better access in a community along with ensure the activity’s success. The local choice was PROVIM Dom Luciano, a daycare center where youth stay morning and afternoon. This place assists in the formation of young people residing in the neighborhood.

As our audience would be children, we have developed a playful and fun way that allowed both approaching dengue issues and approximate children to University reality and research developed there. Thus, our team organized the play "The mighty bacteria against dengue", which addressed the main aspects of the disease, ways of common and alternative prevention, in addition to the role of science in meeting demands of society. The piece was made up of five characters, interacting with each other and with the children. Among the characters, we highlight our “repellent bacteria” (bug-shoo) and the “tire-eater bacteria” (Rubber Bye), representing Brasil-USP team. Therefore, this activity was a moment of interaction between the two teams, which used the themes of their projects in favor of awareness about dengue.

At the end of the presentation, the audience was divided into 10 groups to carry out the planting of Crotalaria juncea seeds, a plant that supplements dengue prevention. Crotalaria is a plant from Fabaceae family which attracts dragonflies, natural predators of A. aegypti eggs and larvae. Thus, we conducted the planting of Crotalaria seeds in PET bottles, helping to reduce the garbage dumps and mosquitoes breeding sites.

This intervention gave us a happy opportunity to unite members of our Team. Seeing the smiling faces of the children and their curiosity for our bacteria costumes really inspired UFSCar-Brasil!