Local currency in Brazil
Brazil is a country of contradictions:
it has the biggest economy of South America (10th of the world) but has
also one of the worse income distributions in the world. Of its 180
million inhabitants, the poorest 20% receives 2% of the national
income, while the 20% wealthiest group receives 60%.
STRO tries
to improve the living conditions of the poor and started therefore
several projects in Brazil together with its main partner InSTROdi.
InSTROdi is a strong, specialised local advisory organisation based in
Porto Alegre (Southern Brazil). InSTROdi plays a pivotal role in
organising, advising and (in some cases) implementing the individual
projects.
Currently six projects are running in Brazil:
CompRaS
In the southern state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), a business network with the name CompRaS has been set up.
The CompRaS Association is the core organisation
in this project. An important partnership has been achieved with Banco
do Brasil, both at central and local level. The Guarantee Fund of RS
covers the risks of internal loans in the formal currency against a
cost of a one time three percent.
At the moment 738 companies are member of the network and this number is growing rapidly. More info
C3 Parana
In Parana (Southern Brazil) a business network is created to
address the housing problem both for the benefit of the homeless as
well as for the civil construction sector that only uses part of its production capacity. More info
Rubem Berta
Project Mudanda a cara is a facelift. Occupants and entrepreneurs in Rubem Berta, a
poor neighbourhood in the periphery of Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil,
decided to tackle poverty and crime themselves.
The
local currency, Rubi started to circulate in August 2004 and is used
for example to give people an advance in Rubi's to have their houses
painted. The painters get paid in Rubis and for their part can spend
their Rubi's on clothing, books and food on the regular 'Rubimarkets '.
More info..
In Rubem Berta also will start another project: learning for learning in which children can earn a decent meal in a restaurant by learning from each other.
Tobias Barreto
The surrounding region of Tobias Barreto has something which most
villages in the arid North East of Brazil can only dream of: a surplus
of water. Yet, the local agriculture and economy have insufficiently
benefited from this advantage. For this reason STRO co-operates with
entrepreneurs and the local government in agricultural innovation: the
production of sheep cheese, bio fuel and organic vegetables.
More info
Restaurant for street children
Street children in Porto Alegre and Tobias Barreto earn local money by
learning and teaching. By doing so they can pay their daily meal. Read more...
Palmeiras
In Palmeiras the district bank BancoPalmas works
with the renewing Fomento method: Microcredits benefit a whole district because of
the combination with district money.
See those 6 projects on the Map of Brazil
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