Instituto Ethos

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Employment and income generation

Mel Frias

The theme Intersectoral cooperation for local development was addressed by Paulo Itacarambi, executive director of the Ethos Institute, together with Jacques Pena, president of the Bank of Brazil Foundation (FBB); Gérard Zwetsloot, responsible for the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation; Nazem Nascimento, professor at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and São Paulo regional director of the Unitrabalho Foundation; Neylar Lins, AVINA Brasil representative for the Northeast region; and Nilson Tadashi Oda, consultant for the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT) Solidarity Development Agency (ADS). These people and their organizations comprise the Grupo de Ação Solidária no Nordeste Brasileiro (Brazilian Northeast Solidarity Action Group), a project that aims to generate jobs and income to the population. “The idea behind this objective is to foster social inclusion and create conditions for people to achieve self-management as soon as possible,” said Oda. For this purpose, investments in the honey, cashew, solid residues, manioc, and apparel production chains are necessary. “These work areas were chosen because they are vocations of the Brazilian semi-arid region,” explained Pena.

However, the group still faces several constraints, such as lack of working capital, public policy not always supporting the initiative, infrastructure organization, production chain governance, training of producers, lack of technical assistance, and, above all, commercialization, which was subject to many questions made by theme panel participants.

The project has developed works created, restructured and commented at the Encontro Internacional do Nordeste Brasileiro (Brazilian Northeast International Meeting), where the group introduced itself to the companies. In professor Nascimento’s opinion, “the Brazilian Northeast Solidarity Action Group seeks to establish a solidarity economy that starts with local development, providing the population with conditions to achieve health and short-term education through employment and income generation.”