You can download the Projects Folder here.The ASAS do Beija-Flor or WINGS of Hummingbird youth capacity building project aims to foment youth entrepreneurship in sustainable community development and assist us in identifying future capacities to work within our network of community prevention centres. The project stretches over two years and each year we aim to capacitate 25 young people from the Hummingbird Project, preparing them for entrepreneurial actions towards positive community development. Apart from their common training as an integrated group, these young people are sub-divided into five groups for the entire year. Each group is working on an individual social development project within a specific topic, which will eventually be directed at the underprivileged community of Sítio Joaninha where CARF is constructing their first community prevention centre.
The five groups will each present their ideas at the official launching event of the WINGS of Hummingbird Project on March 1st. 2008 to an invited public consisting of among others, social entrepreneurs, community leaders and inhabitants, schools and universities, parents and local politicians.
These five different, although inter-linked projects, consist of four developmental phases:
- The first phase is concentrated on research of the specific group topic.
- The second phase is to discover and create a concrete project with clear objectives, needs and fund-raising possibilities for its implementation.
- The third phase will be the implementation of the actual projects.
- The fourth and final phase will be the evaluation and presentation of project results during their graduation ceremony in July/August 2008.
The five projects being developed by our Youth Entrepreneurs are:
1. Health – "SAF Saúde" - Devising a project to prevent FAS/E - Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Effects and reduce damage caused to children affected by this problem, FAS/E being a totally neglected area in the Brazilian health system, where little or no data nor orientation are available to the public regarding one of the most extensive reasons for mental retardation and learning deficits amongst children throughout the world today. In
2. Income Generation - "Arte Brasil" - With an objective to identify and select an existing income generating activity at Hummingbird that can be further developed and extended to the community, assisting needy families (especially single mothers) with an alternative and dignified income. This will be a project connected to Hummingbird's existing production of artisan bijouterie, where the group is trying to identify new possibilities for the use of indigenous originated raw materials for the production of more exclusive pieces. In this way they will also have a positive effect on at-risk indigenous communities. Almost all of Hummingbird's bijouterie production is exported to Norway today and sold through CARF’s Kolibri Boutique there, so the possibilities for expansion of the export market are relatively positive.
3. The Environment - "Açaõ Verde" - To devise and implement a project to benefit and educate our target population, assisting in the environmental recuperation of their community, who's habitat is in one of the most environmentally destroyed regions in the state of São Paulo, due to its existence on and around one of the largest rubbish tips previously serving the city for 30 years, but deactivated six years ago. The community for our first prevention nucleus is situated in this now protected watershed region that serves São Paulo's main water supply; the Billings Reservoir.
The group are developing ideas for an environmental education "park" situated on the land close to where Hummingbird are constructing their new community centre, where the protection of fauna, flora and the natural resources will be the focus of their educational programme. The project aims also to include the surrounding communities through serving the many local schools.
4. Social Communication - "Olhar Social" - Has a main objective to preserve the memory of this rather special community, which has developed irregularly and disorganized during the last three decades. The group desires to create a multi-media exhibition of photos, texts, sound recordings and video clips based on materials collected within the community, together with a compilation of the contents in book format. The exhibition has the possibility to be shown to other communities also.
5. Nutrition - "Nutri-Ação" - Aim to create a project to better the quality of nourishment available to the many low-income, poverty stricken families who inhabit the community of Sítio Joaninha, many who are obliged to scavenge for discarded items thrown on the roadside after market to complement their alimentation. The group are working on a partnership idea with local fruit and vegetable markets to organize collect of surplus, quality products during market time by community members (there is always a market each day somewhere in the surrounding communities) and the subsequent training of inhabitants on the practical use of these freely available, healthy products, which will help to sustain their families on a higher nutritional level than what is evident today in the community. The aim is to join this action with an existing educational initiative made available through a travelling "nutrition bus" that already visits other communities. Their vision is to extend the project to other shanty communities where the need for better nutrition is evident.
Each project group has a volunteer mentor with a certain amount of specialization within the project topic.
