Organic food & education for families in Rio slum

Dear donors, 

On behalf of Favela inc. and all of the local organizations and leaders that make up our community and network,  we would like to thank all of our past and new donors for believing in the work we are doing to support the low-income residents of the favela achieve their true potential.

In our last update, we shared with you that we were starting to map out other sustainability centered, favela based projects that we could partner with to develop local infrastructure for the cultivation of organic agriculture. In addition we were also conducting a viability analysis of digitizing and expanding our course with our partner Organico Solidario while engaging the recent course graduates in order to transform them into community agents of change.  

At that time it seemed that we had gotten through the peak of the pandemic and that things were slowly moving back to normalcy. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case and the new variant of COVID-19 has continued to wreak economic havoc on the residents of the favelas. This required us to take a hard look at our core priorities and focus on ensuring the survival and sustainability of Favela Inc. at the institutional level. After extensive conversation with our management team and our strategic partners, we realized that we would need to scale back some of our plans and ground ourselves in the necessities of the current situation.

Therefore over the last few months we have focused our efforts on three main objectives:

• Support the local community by collaborating with the favela leaders from our collective Vidigal Vive in order to continue distributing nearly 100 emergency food kits per week to the most vulnerable families.
• Improve the structure, organization and processes of our institutional departments and volunteer teams.
• Finish the integration of a Board of Advisors with a dynamic background in order to expand our capacity to fundraise and develop high level partnerships.
• Develop and launch our new brand identity along with an improved communication strategy in order to solidify key partnerships and brand positioning. 
• Compete for funding from grants and raise additional funds focused on our operational costs to ensure stability and continue to develop amazing initiatives like Agrofavela

The Future of Agrofavela

Although we have had to divert our attention in the short term from some of the objectives we had for AgroFavela, we are far from abandoning this important initiative. Our partnership with Organico Solidario is strong and as we approach the second semester of 2022 we will continue talks to structure out an efficient methodology for offering our course to favela residents throughout Brazil who continue to receive organic food baskets. 

Although we would love to focus our efforts on executing Agro Favela in its entirety right now, we understand as an organization the importance of having patience and a long term approach focused on sustainable impact and building a thriving organization that's here to stay. 

We highly value your continued support of Agrofavela and Favela Inc. and for having the faith and patience to be a long term supporter of this audacious initiative. All funds raised for Agrofavela in the coming months will be held and earmarked for the continuance of our efforts as soon as we can strategically and responsibly do that. 

All of our accomplishments could not have been possible without the support of our incredible donors month by month. We thank all of you for trusting us to generate an impact on the lives of the residents of Vidigal by donating to our projects on GlobalGiving. We will continue to send you updates through Reports and Appeals on GlobalGiving and posting on our website, Instagram, and Facebook pages. Make sure you follow us to keep up with our news and activities!

You can send us any questions, comments, and feedback by email at anabeatriz@favelainc.com. I look forward to hearing from you and connecting with our big family of supporters!

Keep safe, and we will be in touch again soon!

Dear donors,

Since our last update in May Favela Inc. has been extremely busy bringing on new employees, analyzing the results of our work throughout this year and the pandemic and building a brand new brand design launch. Throughout the course of the pandemic our organization has grown immensely from just 3 employees to more than 7 full-time and part time employee and a network of nearly 50 volunteers. But along with growth comes increased responsibility and our dedication to favela communities goes beyond 2021. We are fully committed to creating projects that create long-term, sustainable, systemic impact and in order to do that we have needed to take a small step, reorganize, analyze and prepare for the future. Coming in January of 2022 we will launch the new and improved favela inc brand combined with a dynamic plan to guarantee the success of our initiatives, this especially includes Agrofavela.

Since our last update on Agrofavela these are some of the things we have been working on:

Mapping local green projects in the favela

Beyond our own programming we understand that to help a favela become an Agrofavela it is imperative that the locally run “green” projects have access to the knowledge, resources and support essential to achieving long-term success. We are currently mapping out local projects such as community run gardens, reforesting initiatives, recycling collectives and local cleanup groups. After mapping these projects we will engage them individually and through a dynamic selection process choose a selection of initiatives to incubate and support. 

Orgânico Solidário integration of the course in other communities - viability analysis

After the successful running of our inaugural Agrofavela course we conducted post course surveys in order to understand how we can improve the quality of our methodologies and content. Through this analysis we have determined a variety of core improvements we can make so rather than immediately beginning an additional term we are taking a step back to adjust and improve in order to come back strong soon with a course that is better than ever. Beyond this, we are conversing with our partner Organico Solidario as well as other sustainable education projects in favelas throughout Brazil to think about how we can scale our content to other communities in the best way possible. We look forward to sharing with you soon our plan to graduate even more health and sustainability ambassadors in the favela.

Community sustainability ambassadors

One of the main feedbacks we got from the students from our course was that they were looking for what to do next once the course was finished. We realized that by the end of the course these students had naturally become local ambassadors of health and sustainability. Therefore we are currently devising a plan to work with our course graduates to arm them with tools and resources so that they can continue to apply the knowledge acquired in their community in a way that inspires others to make positive changes in their life and get involved in the health of the greater community. This will include engaging the local non profits that helped us select the students who participated so together we can launch community health awareness campaigns that include teaching others about planting their food, improving their relationship with nature, increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in their diets as well as organizing community cleanup initiatives.

Thanks again for your continued support of Favela Inc. and Agrofavela and we look forward to having you with us along this journey to help cultivate Favelas that are healthier and happier.

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