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Fostering Environmental Stewardship in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil

Fostering Environmental Stewardship in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil

Program: Dow Distinguished Awards
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Santa Marta

Santa Marta is located in São Leopoldo, a city approximately 30 kilometers north of Porto Alegre, Brazil. São Leopoldo has a conglomeration of informal and formal settlements, which include regularized neighborhoods and public housing projects. Santa Marta faces a host of environmental challenges that result from trash dumping in public spaces, trash burning, animals opening trash bags, and inadequate sewage, water systems, and road infrastructure. These issues stem from systemic inequalities within the governmental structure that provides waste management and infrastructure resources, as well as the lack of public participation in the participatory budget process.

We propose a series of interventions that we will implement in the upcoming year with the support from the Dow Distinguished Award including:

  • pilot our community mapping program to provide local residents with the opportunity to produce important information about the community needs, such as determining suitable locations for new stormwater parks and trash traps and identifying which roads needs infrastructural improvements.
  • use public campaigns, under “Together We Make Santa Marta Home,” as a tool for sharing information, changing perceptions, bringing people together, and influencing behaviors, processes, and outcomes.

The community of Santa Marta has a history of strong collective action among residents and the capacity to re-envision and redefine what it means to be a proud resident of Santa Marta. We hope that our proposed interventions will not only be used as a learning and advocacy tool, but we also hope that they can help bring more community cohesion, inspire environmental stewardship across the different generations living in the community, improve strategic neighborhood infrastructure, and serve as an example for other informal settlements.