Catalina Gomez's blog

The second day of the New Cities Summit hosted several interesting and thought-provoking discussions. The day started with a panel on participation; highlights included Porto Alegre’s Mayor José Fortunati talking about the city’s renowned participative budgeting exercise which has been in place for 23 years. He attributed the city’s excellent scores on the Human Development Index to the great levels of active and sustained citizen participation in key development issues. Read more.

Influential policy makers, academics, innovators, entrepreneurs, and social and urban development practitioners are currently gathered in São Paulo for a two-day summit organized by the New Cities Foundation. The event focuses on the current challenges that cities face becoming more just and inclusive. Read more.

One in ten young mobile phone users in Rio de Janeiro use that device for online access; on average, Rio youth are connected to Facebook about 5.3 hours a day. But many of them use the Internet and social networks not just to socialize, but also to mobilize their peers in behalf of social and environmental causes. Such is the case of Marcos Braz and a group of surfers and engaged friends — most of them living in Rocinha — who are worried about the contamination of São Conrado beach, located in Rio's southern zone and considered by many to be one of the most beautiful in the city. Learn more.

A Maré é uma das maiores comunidades do Rio, composta por 16 favelas e mais de 130 mil moradores. Recentemente o Observatório de Favelas e a Associação Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré — Redes da Maré — completaram um Guia de Ruas que permitirá a seus moradores ter conhecimento detalhado das ruas e endereços desta importante comunidade. Este é um grande esforço que também permitirá incluir todas as ruas, becos e travessas da Maré dentro do mapa oficial da cidade do Rio de Janeiro, mostrando a importância de aproximar as comunidades de baixa renda da chamada "cidade formal" e ser realmente reconhecida como parte integrada da cidade. URB.IM conversou com Dalcio Marinho Gonçalves, Coordenador Geral do Censo Maré e aprendeu muito sobre esta iniciativa pioneira que está apontando para uma maior e melhor integração das favelas do Rio de Janeiro.

Favela Orgânica ("Organic Favela") is an initiative launched in late 2011 by Regina Tchelly, who decided to share her love of cooking while improving nutrition and sustainable food practices among favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Tchelly's specialty: the use of natural ingredients that people generally discard, such as banana, watermelon, and passion fruit peels, carrot leaves, and cauliflower and broccoli stalks. Weekly workshops held in Morro da Babilônia, the favela in southern Rio de Janeiro where Tchelly lives, combine instruction in cooking, sustainable urban agriculture, and composting practices with meals featuring tasty, healthy dishes like watermelon peel risotto and banana and passion fruit peel cake. Learn more.

Among Latin American countries, Brazil has led the way in addressing climate change in the region, notably by creating a national public policy framework to guide priorities and interventions in the field. Some of the most relevant advances include the approval of the National Policy on Climate Change in 2009. In the same year, a National Fund for Climate Change was established allowing the allocation of resources for climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives. Brazil has also moved forward in reducing the deforestation process of the Amazon forest and has been successful in developing and expanding the use biofuels, areas that have placed the country in the global sustainability spotlight. Learn more.

O Museu de Favela – MUF é uma associação privada sem fins lucrativos, de interesse cultural e comunitário que atua no museu territorial integral formado pelas favelas Pavão, Pavãozinho e Cantagalo. Desde sua criação em 2008 o MUF desenvolve processos museais experimentais de modos de trabalho inusitados, plantando novos paradigmas no campo da museologia social brasileira. A visão de futuro é transformar aquelas favelas em monumento turístico carioca. A missão do MUF é realizar tal visão de futuro, transformadora de condições de vida local, através da cultura, e demonstrar que a solução de inclusão funcional urbana e socioeconômica sustentável de favelas deve partir de dentro delas.

In little more than a decade, Catalytic Communities has become an active voice in promoting a more educated understanding of Rio de Janeiro's favelas. CatComm (as it is usually called), a nonprofit organization established in Rio in 2000, aims to integrate the favelas into the wider society and generate greater knowledge about their rich cultural and social value. To accomplish these goals, it actively promotes capacity-building initiatives among low-income community leaders and youth, as well as conducting neighborhood visits and research. Read and discuss.

Brazil's fight against HIV/AIDS has been widely recognized as a success story. In the course of the worldwide, thirty-year battle against the epidemic, this country has managed to control the spread of HIV/AIDS with highly active and open preventive campaigns while providing universal access to treatment to all HIV/AIDS patients. The most important aspects of Brazil's success in fighting the epidemic have been, first, the government's strong leadership and support to HIV/AIDS programs, at both the national and the municipal levels; second, the active mobilization of civil society and non-governmental organizations, which have helped to promote support at the local level. Read and discuss.

Until very recently, only the better-off neighborhoods in Rio were able to explore local cultural life and entertainment options online. Today, however, it's possible to get updated and geo-referenced information about the region's history and cultural life, as well as where to shop and eat in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods — such Complexo da Mare, Complexo do Alemão, Santa Marta, Pavão Pavozinho, and Cidade de Deus. All this is possible thanks to an initiative called Wikimapa, created in 2009 by Rede Jovem, an organization that has been working for more than 12 years to promote social inclusion among low-income adolescents though the use of technology. Read and discuss.