Garbage Pickers Research Articles

Hepatitis C virus infection in garbage pickers of different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is a significant health problem worldwide, especially in developing countries. Medical municipal waste pickers are at higher risk of exposure to infectious viral diseases. The current study aimed to explore HCV infection in different waste collectors. The objective of the current study was to investigate the incidence of HCV infection and associated risks among the waste collectors of five districts of Malakand Divisions and Bajaur district (old Bajaur agency) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. During the study period (May-December 2017), blood samples were collected from 300 waste handlers and tested for anti-HCV antibodies using the ICT method. The results obtained from the data were analyzed statistically using SPSS 20 version. In this study, we included 300 males aged 9 to 76 years, which means 27.31 ± 11.9 years. The prevalence of HCV was 3.3% (10/300). Among the positive cases, HCV infection was slightly higher in married persons than in unmarried (3% vs. 0.33%, %, PV < 0.01, odds ratio 4.73, 95% CI =2.2-9.8). A high infection rate was reported in waste scavengers from the district Swat, followed by those in the Bajaur district. Needle prick injuries and barehanded practices were the significant risk factors for infected cases. Our findings highlight the need for personal protective equipment. It is suggested that all garbage collectors should be trained in handling waste to reduce infection.

Penerapan Computer Mediated Communication Mobile Application Mall Sampah Sebagai Layanan Penjemputan Sampah di Era Digital

Mall Sampah is present as a solution in effective and efficient waste management that seeks to utilize waste, which has the advantage of added value and utilizes mobile application-based technology. The purpose of this study is to explore the application of CMC in a mobile application-based garbage collection service in the digital era. The research method used in this study uses a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. With data collection techniques in the form of in-depth interviews with informants. The results of the study found that the application of CMC in the Garbage Mall application can fulfill three important assumptions in CMC, namely communication as a process of exchanging information, where in this application communication interactions have been built between Garbage Mall users and collectors, then mediation acts as a technology that can assist in transferring information such as the Garbage Mall application and several supporting platforms in user communication and garbage pickers such as Whatsapp Messenger, email and telephone, after that the last basic assumption is that the computer is a tool in running technology so that humans can still interact with each other such as using cell phones/ smartphone.

Invitation to Restorative Practices in Critical Qualitative Research

Introduction| June 01 2022 Invitation to Restorative Practices in Critical Qualitative Research Kakali Bhattacharya Kakali Bhattacharya Kakali Bhattacharya is an award-winning professor at University of Florida housed in Research, Evaluation, and Measurement Program. Her work has made spaces in interdisciplinary de/colonizing work and qualitative research where creativity and contemplative approaches are legitimized and seen as gateways for cultivating depth, integrity, expansive inquiry, and discovering critical insights. Substantively, she explores transnational issues of race, class, gender in higher education. She is the 2022 winner of American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) inaugural Guba award for Outstanding Contributions to Qualitative Research from the Qualitative Research Special Interest Group (SIG). She is the 2018 winner of AERA’s Mid-Career Scholar of Color Award. Her co-authored text with Kent Gillen, Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative, has won a 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from AERA (SIG 168) and a 2018 Outstanding Book Award from International Congress of Qualitative Research. Correspondence to: kbhattacharya@coe.ufl.edu. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (2022) 11 (1-2): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2022.11.1-2.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kakali Bhattacharya; Invitation to Restorative Practices in Critical Qualitative Research. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 June 2022; 11 (1-2): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2022.11.1-2.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentDepartures in Critical Qualitative Research Search I am at a rural tea estate in Darjeeling, India. It is April 2021. Three new mutated variants of the coronavirus are in the air, creating devastation and death the likes of which I have never seen before. Whole families are dying within days of each other. Diasporic Indians who have flown back to India from the US, Canada, and other parts of the world to tend to sick parents and other family members are themselves becoming ill and dying. Relief groups are struggling to serve the needs of countless citizens begging for oxygen, medicine, and beds for their loved ones. Amid this rampage, the most forgotten are the transwomen, migrant workers, Dalit garbage pickers, custodians, Adivasi (Indigenous) tribes, and unhoused HIV-positive folks, battling the virus with little or no support or priority of care. In the midst of all this suffering, I can’t help but recognize my privilege in... You do not currently have access to this content.

An intersectional analysis of socio-cultural identities and gender and health inequities among children and youth in street situations in western Kenya

Research has uncovered substantial gender, social, and health disparities among children and youth in street situations (CYSS) in Eldoret, Kenya. From 2013-2014 we engaged CYSS aged 11-24 years in a qualitative study to explore the sexual language and practices used in the street subculture in Eldoret, Kenya. We engaged 65 CYSS in 25 in-depth interviews and 5 focus group discussions. This work uncovered stark gender inequities, which result in girls and young women in street situations experiencing profound levels of sexual and gender-based violence and harmful sexual and reproductive health outcomes. To comprehend the underlying drivers of these inequities and to appropriately and adequately intervene, we sought to comprehend how CYSS’s social identities intersect with systems of oppression and privilege to produce and maintain these inequities. We therefore sought to reanalyze the original data from this study using intersectionality as a theoretical framework to explore how systems of oppression in Kenya have shaped the street subculture, construct CYSS’s street and resistance social identities, and how these social identities and the street subculture intersect with macro-level structural factors to produce health and gender inequities. Our analysis identified three distinct social identities that are given to CYSS in Eldoret: Chokoraa (garbage pickers), Mshefa (hustlers), and Mboga ya jeshi (vegetables for soldiers). Our findings revealed how these identities and the street subculture intersect with the Patriarchy, the political-economic context, and social cultural forces in Kenya, resulting in hegemonic masculinity and detrimental gender roles and norms for young men and women. Our findings show that CYSS are a product of the oppressive systems that construct their circumstances and shape their social identities. This population urgently requires policies and programs that intervene at multiple levels to halt the harmful practices within street subculture and associated with street-involvement.

State and Trends of Occupational Health and Safety in the Philippines

Introduction. In the Philippines, industries began to recognize the importance of workers’ health after occupational safety and health were introduced in the early 1900s. Ever since, several legal bases have existed to protect the people’s welfare. However, data regarding this matter is limited in the country.&#x0D; Objective. This paper aimed to develop a comprehensive review of occupational safety and health data, including hazard exposures and occupational diseases for various Filipino occupational groups.&#x0D; Methods. A comprehensive analysis of the latest records and statistics from various government agencies, non-government organizations, academe, and research institutions was done. Data analysis was completed through a critical appraisal of the Philippines' current occupational health and safety regarding occupational diseases, injuries, accidents, and existing occupational health and safety policies. Data were also extracted from reviews of literature and other related research studies. Data analysis was done through a critical appraisal of the Philippines' current occupational health and safety in terms of occupational diseases, injuries, accidents, and existing occupational health and safety policies.&#x0D; Results. Most of those working in the informal sectors do not have enough social protection in the Philippine context. Others in the same situation involve construction workers, farmers, miners, and waste or garbage pickers. Child labor was also seen to be prevalent, risking these children's health and safety. Another issue is on gender, and wherein women were found to have lesser protection than their counterparts. Among the industries present in the country, administrative and support service activities, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, financial and insurance activities, education except for public education, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing were seen to have a high prevalence of occupational diseases. The study has shown occupational safety and health among various occupational groups and categories, the profile of occupational diseases in Philippine industries, and the OSH programs implemented in industries.&#x0D; Conclusion. Analysis of available data confirmed the presence of threats of unsafe and unhealthy conditions in various jobs and workplaces. To keep up with other nations, the country should strive more with its local developments.

The Muslim Precariat of Assam: Contagion, Migrants, and COVID-19

This article examines the plight of migrant Muslim garbage pickers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India and their struggles to return home to Assam. Their financial hardships were exacerbated by social, political, and religious prejudices. Belonging to the Bengali-speaking miya community, deemed “Bangladeshi,” government authorities neglected them. The lockdown’s hyped-up anti-Muslim propaganda also reduced them to “corona jihadis.” The author reads their struggles as a case study of the Muslim condition in India and argues for civic engagement for redressing the condition of the marginal and vulnerable. The research was conducted through telephone and Zoom calls and in-person interviews.

“What We Excrete Comes back to Consume Us”: Waste and Reclamation in Don DeLillo’sUnderworld

Meditations on waste, value and recuperation underwrite DeLillo’s entire oeuvre, from Americana (1971) through to his one-act play about climate change, The Word for Snow (2007) and his most recent novel, Zero K (2016), which imagines how humans themselves might be reclaimed. It is, however, in Underworld (1997), widely regarded as the twentieth century’s definitive waste novel, that these themes are most explicit.1 At the time of Underworld’s publication, DeLillo noted that he “had been thinking about garbage for twenty years.”2 In the twenty years since then, the ideas the novel suggests—that garbage might hold cultural value; that garbage might evince something beyond humiliation; and that American history in particular is best told through the matter buried in its landfills—have become all the more relevant, and in fact, become the subject of an academic field of their own. The interdisciplinary field of waste studies, also known as discard studies, effectively seeks to wrest ontological meaning from waste. By probing the cultural significance, history and politics of landfills, marine gyres, and human and animal scat, and tracing the origins of waste metaphors, waste theorists seek to understand such disparate—and seemingly unconnected—phenomena as the everyday lives of garbage pickers and scavengers; the obstacles to mobilizing efforts against climate change; the agential potential of discards; and the relationship between language, capitalist ideology, and the material reality of manufactured waste. DeLillo’s novel anticipates many of these efforts, showing how “everything is connected in the end” (U 826)—from the raw materials with which consumer goods and weapons are made to the companies in charge of carting off, incinerating, or burying their residues. But an examination of the novel’s “management” of waste and reclamation is made all the more compelling by the transformation in the last decade of Fresh Kills Landfill—the gigantic presence that haunts Underworld—into a national park. In what follows, I aim to historicize DeLillo’s depictions of waste in Underworld as well as to suggest the ways in which the text implicitly understands waste to be imbricated in networks or entanglements of human and non-human actors. Waste is an entity that can be seen to “produce effects,” to adopt the terminology used by the New Materialist Jane Bennett, as much as to evidence an effect.3 It is a product of human activity, but it also generates “stories” or activity of its own, in the form of toxic emissions, alteration of soil composition, and human deformities. By attending to DeLillo’s different approaches to waste and its effects, I show their multi-faceted and unstable properties to be central to his aesthetic project as a whole. In doing so, I depart from much of DeLillo scholarship, which has tended thus far to read his depictions of waste psychoanalytically, metonymically, or as exemplifying a postmodern sublime.4 These discourses, I would argue, are in fact products of the “intra-action” of human and non-human agency within Fresh Kills landfill—they are themselves participants, in other words, in the social fabric of the landfill (including its shifting significance over the course of the twentieth century).5

Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump by Kathleen M. Millar

Reviewed by: Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump by Kathleen M. Millar Luis M. Sierra Millar, Kathleen M. Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Garbage pickers, pepenadores, and catadores are the labels by which the subjects of anthropologist Kathleen M. Millar's Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump are known in Latin America. Uniquely, Millar does not focus on these workers as surplus to neoliberal capitalist labor markets or as marginal, precarious, or the detritus of society. Millar's ethnography instead offers a different perspective. What happens when one analyzes these lives not from the premise of lack—of skills, jobs, wealth, or social capital—but instead from their own perspective? Millar uses making a living as the conceptual framework in two interrelated ways: examining the formation of work culture and explicating the economic activities Rio de Janiero's catadores engaged in as recyclers. Her research was conducted at Jardim Gramacho, which was one of Rio's largest landfills, in the decade before it closed in 2012. Reclaiming the Discarded is part of a relatively recent body of literature that asks scholars to reassess their assumptions and to interrogate taken-for-granted categories of analysis. Millar's analysis highlights how scholars have assumed that the economy is a real object rather than a fluid social construction. She uses the catadores' picking of plastics to show how garbage becomes a valuable good through the workers' labor. It is weighed, packaged, and reprocessed into nylon rope that is sold to international clients and manufacturers. Reclaiming the Discarded demonstrates how the catadores' economic activities defy categorization as solely informal, reframing economic activity as fluid and fungible. She illustrates that late capitalism cannot have anticipated how the informal economy enables workers to create a different kind of culture and a unique way of making a living. "Form of living" is a useful a heuristic here, as a new way of assessing economic activity and as a category for understanding the lives of the catadores. Among the many strengths of Reclaiming the Discarded is Millar's analysis of worker culture. The book is thought provoking and insightful, but the explication of worker culture outshines even these qualities. As a participant-observer, Millar vividly details the lives of her coworkers. She highlights many reasons why people began to work in the landfill. She shows the reader that conceptions of a lumpenproletariat, a reserve labor pool, or even the detritus [End Page 436] of society are inaccurate and miss the important ways that catadores made a living in terms of work and life outside work. One would have liked to have seen more about the administration of the Jardim Gramacho and an explanation of the interactions between the drug gangs, the Gramacho administration, the scrap dealers, government authorities, and the catadores. While Millar does show the connections between these actors, one senses that the relationships were far more interwoven than she suggests. While these are minor points, they did detract somewhat from this reader's fuller understanding of the work. Millar's work potentially opens another avenue for theorizing how late capitalism is changing what it means to be a worker and the meaning of work as it relates to neoliberal capitalism. Put more simply, Millar gives scholars a meaningful framework for theorizing what the work and the workers of the future might look like. Millar deploys her theoretical frameworks brilliantly and concisely and grounds them in real-world examples. Readers from many disciplines could benefit from the insightful analysis Millar provides. Her insistence on reframing and replacing the value judgments of the middle classes is an important contribution of the work: it illuminates how academics can fail to interrogate their own biases to the detriment of knowledge production and social reform. In these ways, Reclaiming the Discarded might help workers reclaim the dignity of working-class culture and serve as the basis for activism in the future. Luis M. Sierra Thomas More University Copyright © 2019 Association of Global South Studies, Inc.

Vik Muniz's Pictures of Garbage and the Aesthetics of Poverty

This essay focuses on Brazilian–American artist Vik Muniz's 2008 Pictures of Garbage and the pendant 2010 documentary on their making, Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker. Muniz enlists a group of Brazilian garbage pickers as subjects and participants in the construction of their own portraits, using garbage picked from a landfill outside of Rio de Janeiro. The use of garbage as a material draws attention to global patterns of exploitation that produce both the waste itself and the poverty of the garbage pickers. However, this essay argues that Muniz's social aims are undermined by formal incoherences within the portraits and their subsequent recommodification on the global art market. Using Michael Fried's theories, the essay identifies a tension in Pictures of Garbage between the theatricality of the subjects' poses, drawn from canonical European paintings, and the absorptive qualities of the garbage itself. This dissonance reflects Muniz's own split position as a cosmopolitan global artist compelled to represent Brazilian identity through associations with base materiality.

Perfil socioeconômico de profissionais catadores de quatro cooperativas de resíduos sólidos da região metropolitana de Porto Alegre/RS, Brasil

Urbanization and population growth led to the emergence of one of the greatest environmental problems of our generation: the immeasurable production of solid waste. Realizing this opportunity to work and income, professional groomer arises from his individual performance to your organization in associations or recycling cooperatives. After more than a decade of its formalization, if do not have a profile of this professional who works directly with waste management. The purpose of this article is to describe the socioeconomic profile of the collectors of the Greater Porto Alegre Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. For the collection of data of this investigation was applied a closed interview 50 pickers for construction of the socioeconomic profile. We conducted individual interviews based on socioeconomic questionnaire according to the parameters established by Behs. The results show the feminization work, precariousness in education, but an income that allows the permanence of these workers in recycling warehouses. The professional recycled garbage pickers does not invest in training or qualification of his work, however, keeps a dignified manner, with income and the possibility of action from the values built on cooperativismo.

Dispatches

Dispatches

The Social Challenges of Involving the General Publics in Garbage Separation and Recycling in Chinese Cities

Waste separation bins that are mainly categorized into recyclable and non-recyclable are being installed almost everywhere in China. It is notable that China is pushing hard to get the public involved in garbage separation and recycling. As an ethnographic research, this paper provides social and cultural explanations of why the roles of these newly designed bins are extremely limited. Explanation of such limitation is deeply concerned with, first, the beliefs and knowledge about recycling of the general publics, and more importantly, the history and hard-to-be-changed culture of informal recycling involving garbage pickers in China. As a foreign Chinese, the author has been running around Beijing and other cities in China to explore into the behind the scene Chinese informal garbage collection system. Using a series of informative social surveys, interviewing the public and personal observation, the paper illustrates and discusses the social challenges and current dilemmas China is facing in attempts to formalize its garbage separation and recycling. The aim of the paper is to address the importance of integrating the existing culture and knowledge of the people with the making of future environmental technologies and policies.

A imagem na pesquisa qualitativa em saúde

This paper explores the use of the image as a methodological instrument in qualitative research in health. It is divided into two parts. The first part, which is theoretical in perspective, deals with aspects of anthropological fieldwork in which different views interact in the interpretation, either in the speech of the social actor or in the image that is produced. The second part describes two empirical studies on the image as a methodological instrument to obtain qualitative data, presenting research with images recorded on DVD and photographs of garbage pickers and garbage collectors, respectively. The conclusion reached is that the image can be used both as a complementary example, and as an instrument in qualitative research. Participant observation and interviews can be supplemented with the image but the image itself generates an accumulation of information, stimulating the viewer's ability to comprehend.

An overview of plastic recycling in Rio de Janeiro

The recycling of plastic is carried out under serious constraints in Brazil, the main ones being the lack of both fiscal incentives and selective garbage separation (curbside collection). These difficulties were investigated in the Metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, where the large Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro is located. The ways of disposition and recycling pointed out at Rio de Janeiro can be used as a base of information for other Brazilian cities. The objective is to show how the plastic recycling is been carried out to indicate its own difficulty. Besides this studied subject, it was evaluated the current capacity for the recycling of post-consumed plastic. The study was based on field research with visits to plastic recyclers, dealers, recycling cooperatives sorting plants, selective garbage programs and urban waste dumps. The plastic recycling capacity of the recycling companies located in the Metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, which were studied, corresponded to 8% in 2003 and 16% in 2007 of all the plastic deposited in the main dump of Rio de Janeiro City. Most materials which are recycled come from dumps or controlled dumps, where garbage pickers collect them and send them, mainly, to dealers. The dealers then take the postconsumer plastic to recycling industry, where this material is usually transformed into artifacts with low aggregated value. Poly(ethylene terephthalate) and polyolefins are the plastics most recycled in Rio de Janeiro.

Os coletores de lixo urbano no município de Dourados (MS) e sua percepção sobre os riscos biológicos em seu processo de trabalho

There are several occupational risks inherent to urban garbage collection, and the scope of this study was to identify the biological risks to which urban garbage collectors in Dourados/MS are exposed. A qualitative study using the Lefévre and Lefévre Collective Subject Discourse method was used with 42 urban garbage collectors working for the outsourced provider to the Municipal Department of Urban Services. Data were collected from September 2005 to January 2006. The interviews had an average duration of 40 minutes, and were recorded at the company office when the workers arrived to start their working day and subsequently transcribed. The biological risks mentioned by the garbage pickers were accidents with glass, syringes, thorns, dog bites, and contact with substances found in the garbage. Accidents with sharp and jagged instruments are ways for microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi to infect the human body. Virus contamination, like HIV and Hepatitis B and C, can occur in accidents involving inadequate disposal of contaminated needles. The conclusion reached is that biological risks in urban garbage collection can be reduced by educating the population about adequate garbage disposal.

Outsourcing of Public Cause: a case study focused on the promotion of sustainable collective work

The importance of perceiving new strategies for the demand in social care is a major factor in understanding the effective participation of social actors in a contemporary context. Understanding who effectively meets these demands is the main challenge in this study. Through a case study of a Associations Network of Recyclable Materials Collectors in Curitiba (city in the south of Brazil), we try address in the comparative way the types of actors involvement. In this case, the actors are categorized into public, private and third sector organizations of garbage pickers, promoting and developing picking as an organized activity. This study has a qualitative and quantitative basis, with data collected through questionnaires and analysis of documents, in addition to direct observation of the Network day by day. As a result it could be verified the establishment of an interaction system between different organizations that also precede in different levels of involvement, with high participation of the third sector organizations in the detriment of public and private organizations, consolidating the importance of this sector as the main social actor in the public issue. Palavras-chave: Social networking. Sustainability. Development.

The Gender of globalization: women navigating cultural and economic marginalities

As moves rapidly from buzzword to cliche, evaluating the claims of neoliberal capitalism to empower and enrich remains urgently important. The authors in this volume employ feminist, ethnographic methods to examine what free trade and export processing zones, economic liberalization, and currency reform mean to women in Argentina, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, the United States, India, Jamaica, and many other places. Heralded as agents of prosperity and liberation, neoliberal economic policies have all too often refigured and redoubled the burdens of gender, race, caste, class, and regional subordination that women bear. Traders, garment factory operatives, hotel managers and maids, small farmers and agricultural laborers, garbage pickers, domestic caregivers, daughters, wives, and mothers: Women around the world are struggling to challenge the tendency of globalization talk to veil their marginalization.

A organização capitalista do trabalho "informal": o caso dos catadores de recicláveis

Este artigo discute o trabalho dos catadores de recicláveis no Brasil no período de 1985 a 2005. O material analisado compõe-se de fontes bibliográficas e dados levantados nas cidades de Foz do Iguaçu, Toledo, Guaíra e Marechal Cândido Rondon, localizadas no Oeste do Paraná. Contrariamente às leituras que geralmente mostram o trabalho dos catadores como uma atividade "informal", não subordinada diretamente a patrão ou empresa, as informações levantadas e problematizadas nesta pesquisa indicam que a organização desse trabalho é realizada a partir dos interesses do capital mobilizado na compra, na reciclagem e na comercialização de todo material recolhido por esses catadores. A hipótese aqui desenvolvida sugere que o trabalho dos catadores de recicláveis no Brasil está integrado ao processo acumulação de capital e que a suposta situação de exclusão dos catadores o qualifica para esse tipo de ocupação.

Garbage to Garden: Developing a Safe, Nurturing and Therapeutic Environment for the Children of the Garbage Pickers Utilizing an Academic Design/Build Service Learning Model

Cast out of their highland villages, many Mayans have resettled around the garbage dump in Guatemala City. Children went to the dump to work salvaging plastic, cardboard and food. In 2004, children were banned from the dump and now stay at home without supervision. In 2006, the University of Washington Landscape Architecture Design/Build Program collaborated with Safe Passage to design a portion of their school facilities and to transform their donated, decommissioned dump site into a therapeutic garden. This environment is designed to help the children learn about the natural world, their culture, science, math and writing, gain vocational skills and ultimately reconstruct their lives in a healthier direction. This paper focuses on the role of natural places in rebuilding children's lives concurrent with a disaster and how the rebuilding of a place for safe play, learning and skill building can help children endure and move beyond the immediate effects of the disaster.

Health and self-care among garbage collectors: work experiences in a recyclable garbage cooperative

Study performed with garbage pickers who organized a cooperative to sort recyclable garbage in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in a shed loaned by the city administration. This activity, which has attracted an increasing number of people excluded from the formal job market, presents peculiar health risks and patterns of disease. The study aimed to learn about the participants' concepts and self-care actions, proposing discussions and jointly reflection on their problems. It focuses on the working environment and on attitudes towards health risks. Through the focal group technique with ten female subjects, the expression of capacity of situational analysis of those involved was privileged, giving rise to three main themes. Each theme discussed was followed by the construction of a plan of action in order to meet compatibly the more pressing needs according to the operational feasibility of the solutions proposed.