Abstract

The ethnographic research presented in this article was focused on a local solidarity institution, called OUSAM, founded in the 1980s in the ambit of a community development project promoted by a multidisciplinary team from the local Health Centre in a small rural municipality, Paredes de Coura, situated in the North of Portugal. This institution has been carrying out activities involving children, families and communities in the most isolated parishes of the municipality, by a system of bussing whereby children are picked up from their homes and driven to five small pre-school centres and later returned. This research reveals, however, that this project should not be seen as a restricted school activity or as an outdated solution to existing problems, but as a broader process of education in a community development perspective.

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