Permaculture Project in Brazil

[Alexander]

Hello, friends!
I am Alexander, I live in Brazil in a small city called Araras, in São Paulo state.
Well, I did the PDC here in the Permaculture institute of Cerrado, with André Soares.
I work with a community of small farmers here, developing sustainable strategies for living. The community is very poor, but we already have some good results in agroforestry.
I am writting a Permaculture project with the community, to develop not only agriculture, but integrate all aspects of a human settlement. The First issue is water catchment, and wastewater treatment and use. The idea is to create a Permaculture reference center in the community.
If somebody is interested in more details, please feel free to contact me.
I'd like to know if you friends have some idea about where can I find some financial suport for this kind of project! :)

My best wishes....................................Alexande r!

[Karen]

Hi Alexander...acquiring sponsorship can take a LONG time but don't despair! It's unfortunate that the most accessible - and usually the easiest to acquire - funds are from those large, even multinational coorporations. Search your local area for input from large companies. They often need to improve their image - and then you can decide whether it's ethically correct to involve them. Other sources could be from other countries. I live in Japan so my immediate thought is JICA http://www.jica.go.jp/ They are like the collection agency for 'overseas aid'. I'm trying to find out more information myself - actually I know of a Brasilian-Japanese woman who works at JICA, so you never know... regards, karen.

[Rod]

I just dug up this old post while looking for fellow Parma in Japan...

Triodos Bank (http://www.triodos.co.uk/) in the UK might fund your sort of thing. They fund similar sorts of projects around the world. I bank with them, and I might be in a position one day to seek financing from them too.