Projeto Bagagem

The main inspiration behind the operation of Projeto Bagagem were three main problems identified by its founders as crucial development issues to be addressed, namely:

1) Insufficient income generation alternatives for communities from Brazil’s needy Northern and Northeastern regions widen the social and economic gap between rich and poor;

2) Tourism-related activities in Brazil are apparently growing. However, they reproduce a model that reinforces income concentration, rather than putting forward alternative models that include and benefit the visited communities;

3) There is a general lack of knowledge and awareness about the reality of the majority of the Brazilians from the perspective of innovative and successful development solutions carried out by locally-based organizations.

Aware of these three trends, Projeto Bagagem was created by two university friends, Mônica Barroso and Cecília Zanotti. After graduating in Business Administration in São Paulo both chose to direct their careers to the NGO sector, and joined Brazilian funding organizations. Along their work with various local NGOs their wish to set up their own social initiative to contribute to Brazilian communities grew.

At the same time, thanks to their previous professional experience they came across a number of innovative and successful local development solutions, and realized that those experiences were vaguely known by a wider audience not only abroad but also within Brazil. Also, their close contact with the NGO sector in Brazil demonstrated that while most NGOs working at the community level were extremely skilled in providing local communities with improved basic services in an attempt to fill the gaps left by the government, a common difficulty faced by most of them related to designing and implementing effective and sustainable income generation projects. Thus the idea of giving ordinary people the opportunity to visit such projects, enabling them to experience local life as it is, gain a wider vision of innovative grassroots experiences while generating extra income to the visited communities.

During the first semester of 2002 Cecília and Mônica prepared the pilot-trip and developed the project’s guiding principles. In July 2002 the first group of visitors was set up with 7 Brazilian participants from different parts of the country and the pilot-trip was successfully conducted in four riverine communities in Brazilian Amazonia, in partnership with the Santarém-based NGO Health and Happiness Project (Projeto Saúde e Alegria). The preparatory work was carried out in a fully collaborative fashion. While Mônica worked directly with the local partner and the local communities during six months in the construction of the itinerary and discussions on the initiative’s design and implementation details, Cecília (then based in São Paulo) mobilized the media and created a preliminary website that became the project’s main communication channel to attract and inform potential participants. Projeto Bagagem was then starting.

Alliances with tourism operators focusing on community based tourism in Europe, Canada , USA and Austrália would be a great opportunity in order for Projeto Bagagem to materialize its expansion. We already have ready international products, national logistics and articulation projects to sell a package of 15 to 22 days combining 2 to 3 destinations of community based tourism in Brazil such as Amazon and north-eastern coast, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia; among others. Partnership with media companies and airlines are equally important to disseminate the values of traditional communities and lower the prices for training in the communities and planning the meetings.