From beneficiary to project manager: a path built by the territory
Perifaimpacto 2023 cohort
Between May and July, the Hub Cidadania Ativa Quebrada em Movimento ran another edition of the Jornada Formativa, an eight-week pathway for community leaders, impact entrepreneurs and organisations already working in their territories. Today, I follow this training as the Hub’s project manager. But before I was on the side of those who organise and support the Jornada, I was also on the other side: as a participant, trying to turn purpose into strategy and action into impact.
That experience made me look at my own path. I realised that, in many ways, my story represents much of what I believe to be the essence of this work. Because before I was a project manager, before the training, the specialisations and the roles I have held, I was already being formed by the territory.
Every path begins long before the first job title
Some time ago, I heard a question that made me revisit my own story: “Why did you choose to work with people’s development? Where does that commitment to social transformation come from?” The answer was not in my specialisations, nor in the projects I coordinated or the organisations I belong to. It lay long before all of that. It lay in the way I was raised.
In my family, nobody talked about social impact, innovation or entrepreneurship. Those concepts came later. What existed was something far simpler: a readiness to help your neighbour whenever possible, without expecting recognition, return or any reward for it. It was a way of seeing life, grounded in empathy and in the understanding that a small gesture could make a difference in someone else’s path.
My grandmother, Dona Áurea, took into her home people who came from rural areas for medical appointments and had nowhere to stay. My aunts and uncles give blood regularly, and were always available when someone needed support, whether to dress a wound, spend the night at the hospital or donate a food parcel. None of these acts sought recognition. They were choices that expressed a way of seeing the other person: with respect, empathy and the conviction that people can strengthen one another. It was in that environment that I learned that transforming realities is never an individual movement.
My path through social movements and community initiatives began more than 25 years ago. As early as my teens, I was already taking part in community actions, both in my territory and at school. At that time, I did not have the words I have today to explain what I was doing. I did not talk about social impact, territorial development or strengthening leaders. But I already had the sense that people can organise themselves, care for one another and build answers to the challenges they face.
That path took new turns in 2006, when I left Vitória da Conquista, in Bahia, for Campinas in São Paulo, following an opportunity to work as a local development and solidarity economy officer. Arriving in Campinas widened my understanding of community organising, income generation and network building. It also showed me, in even more concrete terms, the potential that exists when people and territories collectively build solutions to their own challenges.
Along this journey, I took part in community movements, voluntary actions and social initiatives. I have always carried the belief that the greatest transformations happen when we strengthen people so that they become the protagonists of the changes they want to build. The experience with the solidarity economy brought a new perspective to a path that already carried a human and community dimension. I came to understand more and more the importance of strengthening capacities, creating opportunities and recognising the knowledge that already exists in communities.
Talk to a women’s group on mental health
When purpose met method
Over the years, my professional path in the corporate world also widened that view. Working with people management, team leadership, planning and process organisation taught me something important: good intentions need to go hand in hand with strategy, method and the capacity to deliver.
It was in this meeting between community experience and technical knowledge that I built my way of working. I realised that these worlds did not belong to separate paths. On the contrary. When they meet, they make impact more consistent and widen the capacity to develop people, projects and transformation initiatives.
In 2022, as I deepened my studies in human development, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and People Management, I began to reflect on a question that still stays with me: How do we bring tools of self-knowledge and development to the peripheries, where that kind of knowledge still arrives only in limited ways?
The answer came through the therapeutic sessions and free talks I began to hold. At the time, my aim was to share knowledge that often remains distant from the peripheries. I did not yet understand that this work also generated social impact. I knew I wanted to help people recognise their own potential and to share development tools, but I did not yet fully understand how to structure that work so that it could reach more people and become sustainable.
It was during my participation in the programme PerifaImpacto – Impact Business Edition 2023, run by Casa Hacker, that this perception changed. I understood that democratising access to human development is also a way of driving social transformation. That discovery brought a new question: How do I structure this work so that it is sustainable and reaches more people?
It was in this context that I took part in the Trilhas Formativas of the Hub Quebrada em Movimento. I went through the learning pathways, took part in mentoring, wrote projects, submitted a proposal to the Edital Fundo da Quebrada, was approved, delivered the project and completed the accountability reporting. Each stage widened my technical repertoire and strengthened my ability to turn ideas into more solid projects.
I learned to organise better what I was already doing. I learned to look at my purpose through the lens of strategy as well. I learned that a good idea needs structure in order to sustain itself and reach more people. At the same time, I kept taking part in training run by different organisations in Campinas’s social innovation ecosystem. Each experience added new knowledge and widened my view of management, impact and networked coordination.
Karla receives a certificate from Celso
My professional path in the corporate world also began to speak to everything I was learning in the territories. My experience in people management, planning, team leadership and process organisation came to be integrated with my community experiences and with the training I was doing. It was precisely this integration between different experiences that widened my capacity to work in social project management.
The experiences that kept connecting
As this path consolidated, new opportunities arose naturally. Since 2024, I have been part of the financial board of Movimento Rosalina, helping to strengthen an organisation that drives entrepreneurship among Black women through training, income generation and psychosocial-emotional support; and I serve as an adviser to Ozipa Criativa, a Hub of Active Citizenship in Parque Oziel, which recognises culture, civic participation and social innovation as fundamental tools for territorial development.
I look at these experiences as part of one and the same journey. They are not isolated chapters. They are different ways of contributing so that people, collectives and organisations widen their capacity to generate positive impact in their communities.
My path has been built out of these meetings: between community experience and management; between technical knowledge and the knowledge of the territories; between what I have learned and what I am still learning.
Course – Practical tools for self-knowledge 2024, Hub Quebrada em Movimento
Today, following the new cohort as project manager of the Hub Cidadania Ativa Quebrada em Movimento, being in this position makes me look at the Jornada Formativa differently, because I know what it is like to be on the other side.
I know what it means to arrive with an idea, a desire to transform, an initiative that often already exists but still needs tools in order to organise itself and grow. I also know that many leaders do not need someone to tell them what to do. They already know their territories deeply, they already face challenges, build solutions, mobilise people and produce concrete transformations.
The territory also transforms those who transform it
Now I can answer the question that set off this reflection. My commitment to developing people was not born of an academic qualification or a management role. It was born of the examples I found within my own family and grew stronger across more than two decades of community work, professional experience and the learning opportunities I found in organisations such as Casa Hacker.
My path has also taught me that learning, applying and sharing knowledge are part of one and the same process. I learned in the territories, I learned from people, I learned in training sessions, and I learned from the projects that worked and also from those that had to be redone. And today I keep learning as I accompany other people on their own paths.
Mentoring programme at the Hub Quebrada em Movimento 2024
That is why I believe so much in territorial training. It does not deliver ready-made answers. It does not create leaders from scratch. It recognises knowledge that already exists, strengthens paths under construction and widens the capacity of people and organisations to produce the transformations their territories have already begun.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest lessons of my own path: those who train are also trained. Those who strengthen are also strengthened. Those who accompany other people’s development also keep transforming in the process.
Because, in the end, transforming a community is never the work of a single person. It is the result of many stories that meet, learn from one another and go on building, collectively, new paths.