Aldeia das Amoreiras Sustentável

The project Aldeia das Amoreiras Sustentável (sustainable village of Amoreiras) is an holistic local development project aimed at creating a sustainable village through the participation and empowerment of the local community.

The strategy of the coordination group Centro de Convergencia (Convergence Centre, see www.centrodeconvergencia.org) was to make several meetings in the streets asking what is the dream village or what are the dreams that the people have for their village. The result was the concept of a sustainable village, the vision. See the movie in http://vimeo.com/16109018

We are now joining the people in groups to work around the dreams and make them reality.

We are also making a Permaculture design to the whole village based on the dreams and a detailled questionary applied to all the 200 inhabitants. The Permaculture solutions and design will be appropriated by the local working groups and the ecological and integrated solutions will be implemented by the population.

The Convergence Centre is acting as a animator, facilitator and organisator at the same time. We have also invited a group of external facilitators for all the group meetings. We have invited all possible organisations in the region to be partners.

In the coordinating group there are 6 people with Permaculture Design Course and two people with the Transition Initiative Course.

Our challenge is to integrate the landscape around the village and private property in the process of managing for the common good. Of course envolving everybody and all the stakeholders is not such an easy task. But are we are getting there!