Casa Socio-Environmental Fund will provide direct financial support for traditional and most affected communities in Rio Grande do Sul state to regain their bearings and rebuild their lives in manners that also strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacity to deal with the losses and challenges caused by the latest floods.
In May 2024, the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) was badly hit by floods. The affected population exceeds 2.3 million inhabitants, and more than 400,000 are homeless. Around 40,000 people are living in shelters, 182 have lost their lives, more than 800 have been injured and there are still 29 missing. There have been deaths from leptospirosis and more than 46 million tons of water-contaminated waste is expected to be generated. The flood affected 478 of the state's 497 cities.
As we have learned from other tragedies, the country is capable of responding well to urgent humanitarian aid. Once the moment passes, the reconstruction takes 2 to 3 years to accomplish. We plan to make grants to communities directly affected by this tragedy, contributing to the reconstruction of their recovery initiatives now and in the next 2 years. Activities range from family agriculture/agroecology forest restoration, to psychosocial and mental health, and many others.
This project is part of our ongoing efforts that combines grants from different sources. In 2024, 68 community based groups from RS received flexible financial support to allocate according to their traditions and needs, using Casa's grantmaking methodology. In RS state there are more than 7,000 Quilombola families, 344 Gipsy groups, more than 36.000 indigenous peoples and about 1,300 traditional Afro-descendant communities, according to the Ministry of Racial Equity.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
