Building with Brazilian former slaves descendents their “Route of Freedom”
Location
Route of Freedom is part of the Project “Sustainable businesses’ consolidation for improvement in quality of life of the communities around Iguape Bay”, a partnership between IBENS and Votorantim Institute born in 2006.
Eighteen families are direct beneficiaries through tourism activity; and more than 100 families are indirect beneficiaries because somehow they are linked to the service provision. All families are descendants of former slaves and live in nine communities located in an isolated area of the city of Cachoeira in Bahia. They mantain the traditions of their ascendants, ie. the production of cassava flour and dendê oil. Also, they have subsistence crop and work with ...
About You
Contact Information
Title
Ms.
First name
Maira
Last name
Lopes
Your job title
Program Coordinator
Name of your organization
IBENS
Organization type
NGO
Annual budget/currency
USD 363.705,05 (1USD-R$2,084)
Mailing address
Rua Bela Cintra, 409
Telephone number
55-11-3063 5661
Postal/Zip Code
01415-000
Country
Brazil
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
Rua Rui Barbosa, 20 Centro
City
Cachoeira
State/Province
Bahia
Postal/Zip Code
44300-000
Country
Brazil
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership .
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Community Organization
Year innovation began
2006
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Living culture.
Name Your Project
Building with Brazilian former slaves descendents their “Route of Freedom”
Describe Your Idea
Route of Freedom is part of the Project “Sustainable businesses’ consolidation for improvement in quality of life of the communities around Iguape Bay”, a partnership between IBENS and Votorantim Institute born in 2006.
Eighteen families are direct beneficiaries through tourism activity; and more than 100 families are indirect beneficiaries because somehow they are linked to the service provision. All families are descendants of former slaves and live in nine communities located in an isolated area of the city of Cachoeira in Bahia. They mantain the traditions of their ascendants, ie. the production of cassava flour and dendê oil. Also, they have subsistence crop and work with ...
IDB/Fomin
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Deseo postularme.
Si perteneces a un pais de Latinoamerica y el Caribe tienes la oportunidad de presentar tu iniciativa para acceder a fondos para innovaciones en turismo sostenible del BID/FOMIN (para mayor informacion leer la seccion sobre la oportunidad BID/FOMIN en la pagina principal del Desafio).
Consumidores (viajeros), Grupos comunitarios autóctonos, Atractivos naturales y culturales.
Indica cuales de estas tematicas cubre tu innovacion (elige todas aquellas opciones que apliquen)
Planificación y Gestión de destinos, Innovación y diversificación en el desarrollo de productos turísticos, Profesionalización, buenas prácticas y certificación de servicios turísticos sostenibles.
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
The Route of Freedom focus is the economic improvement of traditional Brazilian population and value adding of local patrimony.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
Route of Freedom is part of the Project “Sustainable businesses’ consolidation for improvement in quality of life of the communities around Iguape Bay”, a partnership between IBENS and Votorantim Institute born in 2006.
Eighteen families are direct beneficiaries through tourism activity; and more than 100 families are indirect beneficiaries because somehow they are linked to the service provision. All families are descendants of former slaves and live in nine communities located in an isolated area of the city of Cachoeira in Bahia. They mantain the traditions of their ascendants, ie. the production of cassava flour and dendê oil. Also, they have subsistence crop and work with fishing.
Thus, the project “Route of Freedom” focuses on presenting their ethnic heritage and embodies geotourism through rescue of historical, cultural and natural resources, not to mention local citizens’ empowerment.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
The approach is innovative because it uses the rescue of historical, cultural and natural resources in the shift of marginalized communities into proud individuals of their origins, folkloric wisdom and the place where they live. The empowerment of individual plays key-role in the process because the tours are focused on the interaction of the local residents and the place. The dynamics between them shaped their condition until recent times, and the approach intends to strengthen this dynamic with increase of their self-esteem, rescue of individual story and its synergy with social cognition, enhancement of political power, and training of management skills.
Impact
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
The project is monitored and evaluated, both quantitatively and qualitatively, according to indicators chosen by main stakeholders, and are implemented by local leaders. Impacts on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics were not considered in the formal measurement process so far; also because Route of Freedom is in its trial phase.
Till now the impact assessment was focused on social and economical outputs and outcomes. The project’s first phase was very successful in terms of: social engagement, improvements in local productive chains, selection of economic alternatives and better comprehension of chosen alternatives’ markets. The monitoring and evaluation methodology will be review in the following months because it will incorporate every business impact assessment.
Nonetheless, it was required a better understanding of local patrimony – material and immaterial - by local residents. Also, some infrastructure improvements are planned to be built (public bathrooms and a pier) as homes’ upgrading intended to be made. In both cases, the use of permaculture techniques will enable these enhancements to be done respecting local resources and reducing waste.
Finally, many of local historical constructions and ruins need to be recovered and conserved, but this heritage and aesthetics enhancement is very costly.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Local residents are involved in almost all phases of this project. Daily tours –which are currently in trial phase, will be conducted by two local guides of the “tourism group” and other services will be provided by community residents, such as dance presentations.
In the project’s development phase local residents were involved in all decisions and activities: from selection of visual identity to product design. The income distribution was also reached in consensus.
Residents responded positively to our approach which is in constant evolution because the community is also involved in the monitoring and evaluation process providing us feedback.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
With a positioning of ethnic community tourism, the tours were developed in order to promote visitors’ understanding and enthusiasm with the locale and heritage. The lack of infrastructure and minimum public service, like energy and sewage treatment, in most communities made hospitality services (accommodation and food services) unfeasible in the short term even though there’s a strong desire towards this evolution. In regards to this, the community has also decided to allocate part of the estimated income on an investment fund for improvements to provide these services which will permit a longer stay and enhancement of tourists’ engagement and satisfaction.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
All beneficiaries are former slaves descendents and their traditional knowledge are the key attraction in all tours. A better understanding of the area’s cultural and natural heritage value is the focus of the project from beginning. For example, historical workshops were provided with the assistance of a local historian and the tours design process the group participants were required to identify all local material and immaterial patrimony and select which ones should be in the tours. These activities were fundamental to reinforce the area’s cultural and natural heritage, not only in the touristic point of view but also theirs.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
The initiative is financed by Votorantim Energia and Institute Votorantim. In 2006, they asked IBENS to design and implement a project focused on beneficiating 770 families living in Cachoeira and Maragogipe, in surroundings of “Pedra do Cavalo Dam”. The project’s first phase was implemented from August 2006 to September 2008. The second phase started on October 2008 and will end on October 2011. In this second phase, the overall budget is (conversion 1USD = 2,08 Reais): $1.237.005,98 (2009 - $350.864,36/ 2010 - $506.787,21/ 2011 - $ $379.354,41). The tourism budget is: $152.638,27 (2009 - $60.446,77/ 2010 - $45.246,47/ 2011 - $46.945,18). The estimated annual revenue generated is around $ $66.458,73 while cost are estimated in aprox. $46.851,60 which should result in an income generation of $18.335,54 for them. There are: one full person allocated to tourism initiative and three staff people involved directly in the project and its tourism subdivision.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
The initiative is financially and organizationally sustainable considering its basic needs, but there are many improvement points which could have great impact in project’s outputs and outcomes. Investments on recovery and conservation of historical constructions and ruins, on reinforcement of activities focused on beneficiaries’ local knowledge expansion, and on marketing and communication tools and training.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
In case of management and implementation, the main barriers are: social organization status, expectation alignment, results communication and individual shared-commitment with other others’ income activities. In case of replication, the methodology is designed to adjust to local needs considering its main steps as: (1) comprehension of local productive reality, (2) market analysis, (3) work group motivation, (4) group management training, (5) design business to local reality and (6) results’ monitoring, evaluation and communication. Therefore, the main barriers would be lack of communities’ articulation and appropriation of participative decision-making process which would restrain the continuous bottom-up approach.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
In order to improve group cohesion, a partnership with a Collective Intelligence Initiative which has expertise in articulation of psychological process in group formation and hastening the shift from people cluster to collective consciousness would help to guarantee projects’ sustainability. In order to embody citizenship among local residents, the development of a Citizenship Guide would present local residents their citizens’ rights and all public organizations and programs available to improve their quality of life, local infrastructure and, consequently, tourism initiative.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
The Brazilian Institute of Education on Sustainable Enterprises (IBENS) is an NGO that provides business and technical advice to rural producers in threatened ecosystems in Brazil. Founded in 2001, it has been a proactive actor in encouraging economic activities which generate income for local communities, improve their quality of life and manage their natural resources.
Our focus is empowering rural citizens in order to change their reality strengthening their social network and power, identifying local products with strong market potential, developing creative ways to access their market and stimulating rural entrepreneurs to start or switch into sustainable endeavors.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
As already mentioned, the “Route of Freedom” is part of the Project “Sustainable business’ consolidation for improvement in quality of life of the communities around Iguape Bay”. The project involves 16 communities of the cities of Cachoeira and Maragogipe which somehow were affected with the construction of the Pedra do Cavalo Dam.
IBENS has a technical team on site developing activities related to the following products: honey, pottery, fish products (callinectes, oyster and charru mussel) and tourism. When we arrived, the communities’ income sources were mainly fish products and pottery, in one case.
With this knowledge, we developed a socioeconomic diagnosis followed by a local potential production diagnosis to understand which products and services would better fit the region, and be those in which the locals would like to work with. That was our starting point and consequently also the origin of our innovation: the bottom-up approach in every activity developed with all communities involved. We believe the fact they chose to develop a tourism project is a structural innovation, because it reflected in how the tourism activity was conceived, developed and starting to be implemented.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
Together with local residents one-day tours were created in order to beneficiate from tourism influx of Salvador, an important and touristic city in the northeast of the country and located 2 hours from Cachoeira, city where the project is located.
Focused on ethnic tourism and based on principles of a solidary economy, the tourist will have three options and each of them has a unique theme to be delivered by two communitarian guides in groups of 10 people (max.):
1 - Historical: walks through churches, São Francisco do Paraguaçu Convent and ruins from the sugar cane cycle.
2 - Cultural: samba presentation, chat with the “Griô” which is the community’s elder storyteller, and typical dance presentations (afro roots dance, capoeira and maculelê).
3 - Contemporary life: production of dendê oil and cassava flower, visit to the harvest area and communitarians homes – made of wood and mud, explanations about local medicine plants.
4 - There is also a forth option which is called “Mix”, because it’s a combination of the three tours.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
The most beneficial partnership in spreading our approach would be an alliance with an academic institution in order to develop a case study of the project and communicate its best practices.
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 | ibens_junho 2008_oficinas e dannemann 089.jpg | 305 KB |
 | ibens_junho 2008_oficinas e dannemann 096.jpg | 423 KB |
 | ibens_junho 2008_oficinas e dannemann 091.jpg | 242 KB |
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 | casa do povo 009.jpg | 154 KB |
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 | casa do povo 036.jpg | 148 KB |
 | DSC04935.JPG | 347 KB |
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 | oficina do turismo 008.jpg | 299 KB |
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 | aplicacao camisa logo2.jpg | 115 KB |
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