Transform 100 Rural Communities in Brazil

As our three-month long Global Giving campaign is coming to an end, we would like to thank you for your kind donation and inform you of our achievements. 2016 was a great year for our organization - the Social Good Brazil Lab program nurtured us into being. We researched the problems ethnic and social minorities are facing by visiting 10 communities in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. We talked to about 20 tourists and 15 stakeholders in the tourism industry to understand how the cultural and environmental riches held by rural and traditional communities are quite unknown to the general public. On the other hand, travelers are craving for new and exciting experiences that would make them grow somehow as human beings. Using the method of design thinking, we came up with an innovative proposal: GoLocal aims to help adventurous travelers learn new skills from local people in beautiful places.

The first few steps into the real world were challenging: we had to build a website, contact communities again to co-create inspiring experiences, reach out to potential users through the internet, write an ebook, manage reservations, deal with the initial operational limitations and etc.. One thing was for sure: we learnt more in the past year by taking actions than what we would have gotten out of any book or course.

In September, we came in as the second place in the Sebrae Marathon of Social Enterprises in Espírito Santo. By the end, we successfully developed seven local partners, eleven community experiences on our website and an interface using Paypal, an attempt to achieve financial sustainability. And do you know what was the craziest thing? We accomplished everything without investing a single dollar. Well, we didn’t have any yet.

Then came Global Giving and YOU. Because of you and your generous contribution, 2017 is guaranteed to be an even greater year. We started it out by moving our headquarter to a quite interesting location: Rio de Janeiro! As the center of Brazilian tourism, Rio is covered with beautiful landscapes. It’s also the home of many creative and warm-hearted people. Inspired by this new atmosphere, including a visit to the memorable Museum of Tomorrow, we are now developing the “trips to the future” project. This will be an opportunity for people to visit and interact with some revolutionary initiatives that will reshape their realities. We will use your donations to further engage and inspire more and more “golocals,” with the sole goal of building a more diverse, equal and sustainable future.

So please keep in touch by visiting our website and Facebook. We will update everything constantly and keep you informed :)

Thank you once again,

Roberta Guimarães and Antonio Gatti,

Co-founders of GoLocal

Links:

• GoLocal Facebook Page
• GoLocal Website