By Carola Matarazzo – Executive Director of Movimento Bem Maior
The difficulties faced by the population of this immense Brazil are countless. And the determination and willpower of the Brazilian people are also equally enormous. Often there is just one opportunity missing to promote impressive results like what happened with a group of collectors in Rio Grande do Norte, the Association of Collectors of Recyclable Materials of Caicó (Ascamarca), which in one year saw its project increase with great impact on 116%, going from 50 direct beneficiaries to 108.
Before knowing how this achievement was achieved, we need to understand that philanthropy in Brazil is related to the concept of fundamental social rights, to which many citizens only have access thanks to the actions of civil society organizations. The philanthropic sector increasingly meets health, education, culture, professional training, social assistance and other demands.
Based on this and the recognition of communities as political subjects, which seek solutions to their problems, community-based organizations have been growing in the country. These initiatives seek to boost the development of a territory and its population in a sustainable way: this is called local development.
You may have already heard of this concept, created by Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The idea is that in local development, residents are protagonists in formulating plans to solve community vulnerabilities, through local resources and potential. This is not a simple reflection of a national development process in a given location, but rather the promotion of social inclusion as a strategy to combat poverty. It is development from the inside out.
However, for community-based organizations to expand their impact and promote local development, they need to be encouraged and financial resources are necessary. However, more than that, it is necessary to equip local citizens so that they can participate effectively, from diagnosing the problem to creating the proposal and its application. This interaction of knowledge requires a great capacity for articulation that not all these organizations have.
It was in this context that the Bem Maior Movement launched the Notice of Support for civil society organizations and community-based Brazilian collectives, in the 2019 and 2020 editions. In partnership with the Phi Institute, which was responsible for selecting organizations and collectives and monitoring With the support, we created a broad and constructive dialogue, helping to structure projects so that they had the potential to generate even more impact on the communities in which they operate.
Resuming the history of the association in Rio Grande do Norte, it received support from Movimento Bem Maior and Instituto Phi in 2019 and began the creation of Recicla Seridó, a network of articulation with other groups of collectors in the region. The initiative offers training and becomes a common platform for selling waste for recycling industries and for joint acquisition of inputs and work equipment.
In addition to doubling the number of beneficiaries, the project has 10 new partnerships, nine of them with medium-sized companies that started donating cardboard and plastics for selective collection, in addition to the Seridó Public Solid Waste Consortium, for legal and technical advice. A model ready to gain scale and strengthen the role of more Brazilians in the construction of their own reality.
This article was originally published on the Correio Braziliense website
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