Message-ID: <9507100358.AA12925@cr-df.rnp.br> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 00:58:43 EST From: Companheiros das Americas <mailto:poa-bsb@CR-DF.RNP.BR> Subject: Brasilia e-news #18 To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear Friends,
The last weeks were very full of activities, also here.
All the projects we have already talked about are in development, and
there are some new ones.
The questionnaire on social banking is almost ready, and the list
with the agencies' address working with microenterprise development.
Both the hard copy and electronic versions.
The work with popular cooperatives is going on. To help Jose Ivan
Mayer to organize them (with the sewer women, the wagoners, the
unemployed masons) in the poor satellite cities around Brasilia,
we will edit a small publication with the basic information on
cooperative organization. Of course there are, already, in Brazil
other publications with the same objective, but they are too complex
and long to be discussed by illiterate people. I will do the desktop
publishing of it next week.
We are developing the Cidadanet project. Soon it will be on line.
I hope you will be able to participate. I am ready to send a three-page
paper about it in English to any one who requests.
Next Friday, we will be opening a new front of our project. We will
be inaugurating the Open School of Alternative Technologies in
the Open House of the Street Children, in Brasilia. Besides the
organic garden we help them to grow there, since 93, now we
will help to organize practical seminars about appropriate
technologies. The first will be next July 14, 15 and 16, about
how they could build better and cheaper houses using the ground,
their own work and technology. We will be settling a small factory
of soil-cement bricks and walls, to teach the boys and the people.
Of course, also this initiative is being developed with Jose Ivan (from
the Secretary of Work of Brasilia Government), and with the
Association of Friends of Open House. The French Embassy gave
US$ 1,000 to buy the tools.
The next seminars will be about organic community gardening;
about renewable energies and community development;
about popular computing and networking etc. We also have a
project to help the youngsters who live there to sell the vegetables.
I hope that soon all these projects will be implemented an
properly integrated.
We look forward to soon having implemented the Partners home
page, where each project (from Brasilia and others) will also have
a link to easy their permanent and progressive information releasing.