The pandemic scenario facing the world due to the coronavirus has affected Latin America in a very specific way, due to the deep social inequalities of the continent. The arrival of Covid-19 in Brazil demonstrated the government's limited capacity to deal with these inequalities, especially in an emergency scenario. On the other hand, the scenario reinforced the importance of leadership and the self-organization of communities to react in these situations. Furthermore, in the context of Latin America, social organization and initiatives in the communities, which seek access to housing, education, basic sanitation, health, food and resources, have played a crucial role. In practice, initiatives conducted by the community itself are more connected to real needs and bring more appropriate responses to the local context, with greater cost-benefit. However, the lack of readiness to scale these initiatives makes it more difficult to reach and impact in emergency situations, such as facing the impacts of climate change and also in unexpected scenarios, such as the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction of inequalities and the mitigation of climate change will only come from recognizing the assets present in the communities and from a joint action to increase their impact. The Hub Curitiba Development Observatory proposes a schedule of actions to increase the readiness of initiatives, so that they can be scaled or replicated, based on the exchange of experiences between the individuals, groups and organizations that conduct them.

About Development Observatory
Development Observatory is a permanent initiative that will identify the assets of the communities initiatives, and encourage their scalability and replicability to other communities and organizations aiming at their consolidation and expansion.

The initiative operates in three stages:

1. We will make a catalog of these initiatives, and give visibility to their potential.

2. We will encourage mutual learning, since communities have a lot to learn from each other. We will also encourage public management learning from what is already done in the periphery.

3. Will be the consolidation of bridges. We will connect these initiatives to donors and funds that can contribute with financial, physical, or even volunteer work. This will further strengthen the transformation we want!

Results and impact

First phase (two months)

- We mapped 30 initiatives from vulnerable communities in Curitiba and the metropolitan region in the areas of: Climate and Environment; Education and Employment; Equality and Inclusion.

- We are analyzing the profile of the initiatives, the impact public (around 50 thousand people) and defining ways to give visibility.

- We are looking for partnerships with third sector organizations to map the assets of the initiatives, and then, in phase 2, to promote actions of mutual learning, sharing of assets between communities.

To support the project, we are looking for:

Donors who can finance the asset mapping of initiatives in partnership with local NGOs.