3) Description of your products or services: Lua Nova intends to present the project Empreiteira Escola to the community, offering bricks and training courses for the self building of houses through the sale of the “Build your life Kit” that includes the sale of 8.400 ecologic bricks and the training course to its client in order that women make come true “the dream of a house” . People from Lua Nova are low income population (classes C and D) that can make their dream come true through purchase of bricks and building their house using the “do it yourself” method. The Empreiteira Escola hopes to reach its public through the direct sale of technology in joint cooperation with municipalities, other enterprises and NGOs. Some of the young residents of Lua Nova lived in the streets and had no hope of enjoying their maternity; they will be getting a house in their community and recuperate their self-esteem as the technology can be reached immediately and it depends more on effort than on qualification. Besides this it is possible to produce bricks through mutual help, exchange of knowledge, professional qualifications, opportunities of using talent for the work and increase of self – esteem, social insertion and dignity. This is a courageous proposal of public policy and social change where marginal and excluded population transforms their status in society and “live” in their dream.

4) Description of the operational model: Production estimated for 2006 is 608.000 bricks with 12 youngsters working 5 hours a day with 4 machines. Training will be provided for marketing the “Build your life kit”, along with the sale of bricks. During 2006 there will be 4 courses (100 hours each) including following themes: foundations, building, opening, cover and finishing. For 2007 it is estimated a 50% increase that will benefit 72 and 108 families respectively. Marketing strategies are based on visualization of the product and of its social benefits. Distribution channels (show room, civil construction fairs, associations and sales force) intend to reach the needed population and also the facilitators, namely Prefectures, Municipalities, enterprises, NGOs, financial institutions which might finance the “dream of a house” through public policies or their social strategies. The communication actions, (banners, folders, fair kits, Internet) advertisement and marketing will seek to sale the technology and call the attention to the importance of participative planning for building a house. As a novelty we use the “only cement” brick and soil in civil construction for women as this is an easier procedure. Thus we add a non formal education strategy as the youngsters will learn arithmetic, grammar and the basics of citizenship.

5) Description of the financial model: The option is to target the very low income population as a basic objective for sustainability. The association and facilitators should participate with 75% of the investments generated in the first five years, mainly in making the land viable. This is a process very promising in the long term following the example of Mohamed Yunes from Bangladesh and Magazíne Luiza that invested their shares in this section of the market enabling access to consumer goods. It is logic to think that it might be possible to increase the value of the Kit to generate profit in the beginning of the Project; meanwhile, feasibility of the business is based on the change of social and marketing conception proposing an investment of social values (it does not provide the house already built, but the possibility of building it), the change of market rule (where profit is only possible if the product is offered to the rich ones) thus the sensitizing of the financing institutions ( bigger association among sectors instead of competitiveness) turns a big sustainability strategy of the business in an instrument of public policy.

      Client fees represent this approximate percentage of operational budget: 65%

6) Key operational partnership: We would like to mention that this type of enterprising is well accepted by facilitators in government and private and international areas. Upon Empreiteira Escola started its activities it received many invitations to establish associations with foundations and institutes as well as private enterprises linked to civil construction establishing an alliance with the NGO Habit for Humanity and the Italian Embassy. A main alliance is the one established with population of Alvo and local community; besides this, we gave other alliances; the one with the Italian cooperation (R$ 200.000,00 for implementing the business), Alcoa (a warehouse for manufacturing the bricks), Splice (construction of the show room and 4 houses) School of Engineering of Sorocaba (certification and support of the project) and Ação Moradia (training of youngsters). As main opportunities we identify the establishment of an association with the population of Alvo that effectively perform the project, the optimization of technical resources and the relations creating effective results with scarce economic resources and as a challenge we identify the need to adequate the institutional times with the need to define positions and responsibilities.

7) Current outreach:

What is the order of magnitude of the potential demand for your products or services? Which
    other low-income groups, countries or regions could benefit from it? Try to quantify (number
    of clients, market size in currency):
The Project intends to serve families living in the micro region of Sorocaba (Sorocaba, Araçoiaba and Votorantim) in houses that “are not their own” (rented, given or squattered), rustic, shanty towns or that live in the streets; we are mainly focusing in families earning up to 3 minimum wages per month and those in extreme poverty situation, thus encompassing a part of the population that is not within the criteria of SFI {Sistema de Financiamiento Inmobiliario = System for housing financing}, this is 13.482 families. Lua Nova through the project empreitera escola is developing a methodology that enables a pro active initiative of women that can be replicated in other status and serve as a referent for municipes of the country. This methodology can become an instrument of public policy for attending women thus considerable increasing the market for Lua Nova.

8) Scale-up strategy: