3) Strategy Summary:
A micro credit organism anticipates the one year investment for family conversion to the Organic Agroecologic system of production. An Urban Family group is created and allied to the rural families through a week consumption plan, contributing monthly with an amount of money since the 7th month, and receiving weekly a basket full of organic vegetables as a counterpart. The micro credit has a 12 months payback period with a 12% year interest and a 36 months expiry date. The payment is a fraction of the contribution tax of each allied person.

Harvesting

4) How the Strategy Works:
The system allows that poor rural families, without access to credit and without any real payment warranty, could be included to the food production process in rural and/or urban areas up to 1 hectare. With one-year credit anticipation, NEPA proceeds to the rural family conversion to Organic-Agroecologic system of production and, at the same time, starts to create the urban allied group. On average, each group of 70 urban families guarantees the maintenance of one7 people family system of production working up to one hectare. Once people and / or institutions are aware of their participation in the system, many rural families could be inserted in the process, with a warranty of a Social-Economic- Environmental Sustainable system of production. In Cear , 17 rural families are working one hectare in two communities (Bom Jesus e Barra do C rrego/Itapipoca/CE). The work is financed by E&Co, an NGO from USA with seat in Washington. The finance is 12% year interest, 9 months of payback period and 36 months expiry date.

The cash flow shows that each urban-allied-family is paying the equivalent of a one week vegetables purchase of R$ 25,00 (US$ 9.00/week). The credit is paid without endanger any of the parts of the process, including administration tax and technical assistance.

Educating the young

This Social Alliance promotes real rises in the liquid income for working person (in average, R$ 300,00/month/person [US$ 108.00/month/person]) and a food production of 3 tons per month, plus rural family consumption.

This system is growing trough lots of Brazilian States like Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Sao Paulo, Goias and even other countries like Paraguai (Assunci n).

Planting

5) Key Strategy Elements:

i. Mobilizing Citizen Support:
This item is more appropriate to our strategy, because we have the participation of volunteers since the beginning of the process, stakeholders like E&Co. The strongest element is the Civil Society engagement, as urban consumer families, people from NGO s and NGO s searching to aggregate some value to their projects trough the Organic- Agroeologic system of production, complementing hiatus that their projects do not attend.

Solar energy system

6) Increasing Self-sufficiency and Social Impact:
As late as 1996, there wasn t one square meter of food production without chemicals in Cear State. We started the conversion works without any support of institutions, until that, in means of 1997, SINE, a Federal Government institution, started to support us with a small financial resource to amplify the work to other counties of Cear State. In the year 2000, a State Government survey showed in its statistics a production area of 2.000 Hectares. In 1997, we started the first group of urban allied people with two rural families working in Organic system of production. Today, there are more than 550 families. Therefore, this visibility helped a lot and today, the hardest step is take urban people out of their comfort zone and made them see that their participation in the process makes a huge difference. There are thousands of poor rural families, excluded of the process, wanting to participate of the Social Alliance. We knock from door to door seeking urban families, consumer institutions and stakeholders that want to support the system and create a Social Alliance. We seek an investment of R$ 200,00 per family (US$ 71.00/family) with the promise to payback in a one year period in production-equivalent, creating a support fund to grant the conversion of the rural families.

8) Organization Mission and Vision:
Mobilize rural and urban community, to reconcile the food production and consumerism relations, developing and implanting Sustainable Development models. co-production in harmony with nature.

Organization Size:
15 volunteers (average), 4 people working full-time, and none employees.

Looking Forward to the Next Three Years:
Present in more than 5 states and in more than 20 Brazilian counties, with 140 different groups of Social Alliance, involving urban families, private and public institutions, schools and rural urban areas

Luiz Geraldo de Oliveira Moura, President
Nepa-ce@terra.com.br
Brasil
Telephone: +55 85 3482 06 21
Fax: +55 85 3482 2377
Email: nepa@nepa.org.br
Web site: www.nepa.org.br

Educating adults

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