Exuberant landscapes amongst an immensity of nature. A region in plain development with road expansions, bridges and railways being built. A place where the main income source is agriculture and cattle breeding, but with a focus on sustainability. This movement known as “agro-environmental” and know it´s turning it´s eyes to the social inclusion. The region is Araguaia Valley, the one day was called “the forgotten valley”, at Mato Grosso state, in the central region of Brazil.
Our consultants Tauana Costa and Lucila Egydio were doing a field work, specially at Serra do Roncador region, to meet our partner on this project, the Araguaia League. This is a local farmers initiative that implement projects in partnership with public and private organizations of the region.
The league´s goal is the development, implementation and replication of a sustainable model of cattle breeding on the region. It is anchored on economical, social and environmental aspects. Because of that, we saw on this partnership a possibility of searching together for ways of developing tourism initiatives at the region, anchored on the sustainability pillars and that will benefit the communities of the region and promote social inclusion.
First steps
On this first field trip, we passed rapidly through the territory. A recognizing trip, talking to farmers who are interested in being part of this network and with those with attractions on their land already identified, but not organized yet. We also had conversation with representatives from the public sector, universities, NGOs and with other players that could contribute and be involved on the tourism activities at the region.
Raízes role is to use it´s expertise to work on network, developing community tourism in regions, and empowering communities, mainly female leaderships, using sensibility to map this potential network links that will be strengthened and that we will help to build.
Following steps
Based on that we will design and structure the phases of a project on the next months. After that, the demand will be presented to investors willing to gather resources to put it into action.
The region is enormously rich in natural attractions, surprisingly still practically untouched, the mystic and religious segment of tourism are strong on the region, innovative initiatives on agriculture and cattle breeding based on sustainability, are some of the region´s particularities. There is a lot of potential, but it will demand structuring and ordination actions.
This is an investment looking to the future: developing the activity on the region under the lens of social inclusion. We aim to contribute for this to become reality. As Lucila said, “the richness and natural beauties of the region and marvelous and make us feel the smallness of the human nature in face of the time and space”. So, let´s go! We really like challenges.
