Provide Vegetable Gardens for Families in Brazil

Dear donors and Project friends.

Our project advances on its objectives to offer assistance and investment for persons, families or communities wanting to establish organic vegetable gardens or low cost tree nurseries.

We are not doing much because most of the donations received until now have already been spent in several other initiatives as you can see in the former updates and we almost don’t have any funds left. From June 2011 until today the amount of new donations obtained was $531 which is not enough to undertake nothing new.

Two where the activities we were involved in the June report:

1. The training courses ended well and more than 60 students got their diploma as electricity, masonry, painting, and tile setting technician, what was a great gain to Cambota and other neighborhoods.

2. This family we were trying to help but the man had serious health problem seems to be able and willing to start talking again. We could not find them, neither at their garden nor at their homes. See some pictures of their vegetable garden that is starting to produce again.

As you probably know, the Vegetable Gardens project runs along our other project with GlobalGiving, called “Trees and Education Protect the Atlantic Rainforest”.  This project brings schoolchildren and groups to visit our wildlife sanctuary and to be close to nature, teaching them the need to protect the waters, the Atlantic Rainforest and the Environment.

The Vegetable Gardens project takes us back to these communities, making possible to bring information on several environmental, educational and citizenship issues, trying to develop an environmental consciousness. There we can promote courses to capacitate and organize local residents and they will contribute to protect the local environment, find new green opportunities and jobs, produce fresh, healthy food in community gardens or individual families gardens. We also work at the houses backyards, trimming old fruit trees and planting new ones.

As we go together, we have new plans for next year which will be possible with totally unexpected super donation that project “Trees and Education Protect the Atlantic Rainforest”, will receive as the winner of the Environment category of the 2011 Wave of Change Neutrogena campaign.

This is really great and rare opportunity for us making possible to plan for the next 4 years, expanding projects operations to 2 or 3 neighboring counties and conveying knowledge and new and up-to-date information to uninformed and unaware citizens with a sub project called SALVEASERRA Caravan, mentioned in other updates.

Here the Neutrogena campaign site: http://www.neutrogena.com/category/wave%2Bfor%2Bchange.do

Another important fact is that next year we are going to introduce in our region the Mandalla’s Integrated Production System, developed by Willy Pessoa, also an ASHOKA fellow, which consists of an innovative agro-cattle production method integrating several social technologies making possible to small rural and urban lands to grow in synergy fruits, vegetables, green leaves as well as to cattle small animals, feeding a entire family and generating surpluses that can be sold to the communities.

For more information on the Madalla System visit:

http://www.agenciamandalla.org.br/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=61

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cjQvKF_jb0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTG_5zpYrgo&feature=related

http://www.changemakers.com/agricultura/entries/mandalla-s-integrated-production-system

We consider that project “Provide Vegetable Gardens for Families in Brazil” is essential for the success of the work of SALVEASERRA converting your donations into small investments, offering a real chance of a very important economical, social and environmental shift in the lives of many people, preparing them for a better future in this so difficult and problematic world.

Thank you very much for your help and support.

Roberto Lamego

Dear donor.

I need your help to vote for and recommend the SALVEASERRA project, which as you probably recall is an NGO in Valença, Rio de Janeiro, an Environmental Protection Group working to save the Serra da Concórdia, one of the very few areas of mountainous Atlantic Rainforest remaining and providing vegetable gardens for families in Brazil. We are finalists in the Wave of Change campaign run by the Neutrogena cosmetics company.

Every year our main sponsor, the GlobalGiving Foundation conducts a partnership with Neutrogena (www.neutrogena.com) for a fundraising campaign called Wave for Change. This raises money for worthwhile projects.

The nine Wave for Change finalists were chosen from the catalog of projects supported by GlobalGiving, in three categories: Education, Environment and Disaster Recovery: Rebuilding Lives.

This year, I am delighted and proud to say, the SALVEASERRA project Trees and Education Protect the Atlantic Rainforest has been selected from among 188 projects to be one of the three finalists in the Environment category. This is a rare opportunity for us.

Now the important thing: only ONE project will be selected in each category to share the money being raised. Winners are being chosen by voting on the Internet. The other six finalists will receive some coverage on MTV and in other media channels and other promotions, but no financial support.

For us this is an uphill struggle. My main competitor is a very good and attractive U.S. project with a strong appeal for nature lovers. It also has a patriotic advantage because of course Neutrogena is an American company. American.

To win this competition we will need a massive mobilization of all our friends, and friends of friends in Brazil and around the world. We need to use Facebook, Twitter, e-mails and whatever personal networks may be available.

That’s why I am seeking your help to vote and ask your friends to do the same. As you know, saving what remains of the Atlantic Rainforest is very important, and SALVEASERRA exists mainly with your donations and without any regular government support. This project walks hand in hand with the vegetable gardens project and in the same communities.

To vote in the campaign you do not have to buy any product; you just go to the Neutrogena page and vote: http://www.neutrogena.com/category/wave+for+change.do

Make sure you click on Protect the Rainforest in Brazil!

Voting closes August 31, 2011, and you can follow the progress of the vote by returning to the same page.

Please accept my sincere thanks.

Roberto Lamego

Please visit these links to see slideshows of a recent visit we had of Melissa Balgley and Joshua Niederman from GlobalGiving made to Valeça when they wrote very pleaseant reports about the 2 projects they visited. 

https://picasaweb.google.com/110709315454919422487/MelissaAndJoshVisitToSALVEASERRAInValencaRioDeJaneiroBrazil?authkey=Gv1sRgCI-jl-3ih-LxrAE

https://picasaweb.google.com/110709315454919422487/ADayInTheForestEcologicalTrekkingForJoaoEstevesMunicipalSchoolPentagnaValencaRio?authkey=Gv1sRgCOfZuuKy39KQ5QE

My name is Melissa Balgley and I am an In the Field intern visiting GlobalGiving partner organizations in Brazil! Read here about my visit to Providing Brazilian Families with Vegetable Gardens…

Last year, Denise Maria Wargas Vieira received a greenhouse from SALVEASERRA and its project “Providing Brazilian Families with Vegetable Gardens”. Denise is the president of the Association of Small Organic Farmers of Valença, and is very involved in the organic movement in the area. Denise’s farm was an oasis after driving around the deforested, dusty, overgrazed fields of the region. It is a beautiful plot of land, with banana plants providing shade from the hot sun. For me, seeing farms like Denise’s always seems to be proof that small scale polyculture farms are so much more natural (and productive) than monoculture productions of sugarcane, banana, or soybeans.

Since receiving her greenhouse, Denise is able to produce seedlings and sprouts that she sells at the weekly market and to other small farmers in her organization. This not only enables Denise to generate more income, but also helps the other farmers because it saves them one month of work waiting for the seedlings to sprout. Before the greenhouse was built, Denise earned about Brazilian minimum wage every month. Now, she makes the equivalent of Brazilian minimum wage every week by selling her products and sprouts at the farmer’s market!

This project is extremely important as it complements the work of SALVEASERRA’s other project, “Trees and Education Protect Rainforest in Brazil” (http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/protect-brazil-rainforest/). This project’s goal is helping with the reforestation of degraded land outside of Valenca, Rio de Janeiro. On top of this, SALVEASERRA brings schoolchildren to a beautiful private reserve to appreciate the beauty of the nature and recognize the need to protect the Atlantic Rainforest. SALVEASERRA wants to move towards making community gardens as well as gardens for individual families. With this new addition to the project, communities surrounding Valenca can contribute to protecting the environment and producing fresh, healthy food. This will also give the children who participate in the Trees and Education project continuity in environmental activities.

The Atlantic Forest is a beautiful area of Brazil that is in danger of being completely destroyed. SALVEASERRA is working to protect this area of natural beauty, and appreciates your continued support in order to do this! SALVEASERRA is very excited that they were chosen for Neutrogena’s Wave for Change campaign, but they need your votes! Vote today at http://www.neutrogena.com/category/wave+for+change.do

Links:

• Vote for SALVEASERRA's project on Neutrogena's Wave for Change