KNOWLEDGE AND COPING DURING COVID-19: A report of an extension experience report at the Sateré-Mawé Association of Indigenous Women (AMISM), Manaus, AM

Abstract

This report describes the daily routine of the Sateré-Mawé Indigenous Women’s Association (AMISM) in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The predominant activity of the Association is producing indigenous handicrafts, but with the pandemic, its members had to find strategies for maintenance and survival, faced with the humanitarian health crisis and the consequent economic impacts on the group's activities. This is a case study with an ethnographic approach that also dialogues with university extension guidelines (2018). The experience was attended by members of the association and a student from the Production Engineering course at the Universidade do Estado de Amazonas (UEA), who was a resident of the community and a participant in the extension project. Interviews were used to gather data, through communication technologies such as WhatsApp. Secondary data were collected through the City of Manaus newspaper. Through this experience, it was observed that the AMISM has reinvented itself in relation to its planning and productive organization, producing face coverings and protective products from the forest, turning to the sustainable axis in the preparation of alcohol-based hand sanitizers mixed with aromatic herbs, with the knowledge and aromas of the forest, based on knowledge passed down from the ancestors. To this end, the Association appropriated the social networks Facebook and Instagram, to promote and sell its products to tourists and residents. In the field of egalitarian work, the UEA contributed by giving social returns to the community, through its extension activities, and by reaffirming the role of the student in training, in an integral and responsible way, faced with the emerging problems of the 21st century.