Initiative is taking place in partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, Vale and Fundo Vale

Launch in 2023, a project aimed at supporting the fight against extreme poverty in the Rio Gregório Extractive Reserve in the state of Amazonas has been benefiting around 800 people living in 27 communities. The initiative is run by the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, supported jointly by Vale and Fundo Vale.

Vale’s set of publicly stated global goals in the run-up to 2030 includes a commitment to help 500,000 people leave extreme poverty, in line with the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals – the United Nations’ global call to tackle poverty, protect the planet and foster peace and prosperity for all people. This project, in partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, is one of the first initiatives to be implemented as part of Vale’s program to fight extreme poverty.

“Environmental emergencies and social needs go hand in hand. The least privileged people are the ones who suffer the most from the consequences of climate change. To combat the extreme poverty that persists in Brazil, rather than looking to the future, we need to understand that the present can and must be changed, offering opportunities via health, education, work and respect for citizens, but above all by maintaining the forest,” says Fundo Vale’s sustainability analyst, Mônica Fonseca.

Methodologically, we have adopted an understanding of poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon and an approach focused on multidimensional family monitoring. The focus is therefore on families, monitoring work and harnessing of public policies and social programs in each location, verifying the impacts on everyday life and the situation of vulnerability found. Together with each family and based on their particular context, we propose the development of an action plan in five dimensions that structure the process of getting out of extreme poverty.

At the same time, environmental monitoring activities are being performed by six field workers, who survey local agricultural production, hotspots, fires and community infrastructure work aimed at gaining access to water and healthcare.