Planeta Sustentare´s main goal are the empowerment of poor/vulnerable groups (urban/rural)in the society, environmentally and economically speaking, throught the environmental knowledge of the current conditions they are living, since knowledge raises the resilience and also bringind alternatives and decision power.
The outcome of this process is increased participation of these groups in the society and new perspectives of living and working, enhancing their quality of life.
This goal will be achieved with workshops and comunitary mapping regarding sustainable development issues in a place and local people.

Problema

In Brazil there are thousands of poor and vulnerable communities, susceptible to all environmental problems and consequences, like, water polution, effects of climate change, floods, drought, landslides, or waste disposal (and diseases related to it), and they receive very little government assistance or educational preparedness oportunities. Then, their need is to be provided with environmental knowledge and alternatives based on this knowledge, making these people able to deal with environmental questions in their neighbourhood. So, they don´t have to put their expectations only in the government and wait for years for a solution. Our main focus is urban slums and rural poor communities.

Solución

With our workshops and comunitary mapping projects, communities will be able to make decisions, to find alternatives, and they will be supported when demanding something. Our workshops and comunitary mapping seek to explore the environmental problems and potentials of a place and local people, aiming to solve this problems and enhance quality of life providing sustainable development in the place. Some representatives (specially women) of these communities will be chosen and instructed in the workshop process, and the result/conclusions will be communicated to all group.

Ejemplo

One of my planned workshops consists in to assess the environmental problems of slum, like, for instance, lack of waste disposal places or lack of food. I would first select people to represent the community (local people) and guide them to a applied study of the environmental problems and potential of the place regarding waste and/or food. A comunitary map can help people to "see" the solution, for waste, the best place to dispose it without contamination of water problemas, and/or lack of food, the map can help to set some places suitable for domestic agriculture. This can enhance the decision power of the community and can increase quality of life and awareness of climatic change, and besides that, the solutions proposed can be a source of income, depending on the problem.

Mercado

In Brazil this approach is not a practice yet. There are some NGO´s helping vulnerable/poor groups, like CARE, or smaller brazilian ones (great initiatives), but they are not focused only in this public or practice that I am proposing.