Biovilla - a cooperative for sustainable development from Portugal

This blog entree is about Biovilla, a cooperative for sustainable development in Portugal, responsible for 55 hectares in Arrábida Natural Park. This project have three main bases: Environment (planting a food forest), Learning ship (school, workshops for sustainable development) and Nature Tourism (sustainable tourism).

I will talk about my project, I´ve been part of Biovilla since 2006, at the time, our project was just a dream to “save the world”. Our multidisciplinary team gets together when we didn’t know what really want to do, but for what we already knew: there is an option to make a better world, the world already has the solutions to make the right thinks for a sustainable development. Our founders were from Economics, Marketing/administration, Physics and Biologists, engineers of energy, environment arrived, accountant, architects but mostly people with different know how that wish to work together, learn with each other and make a better word. We fell in love with the design for sustainable development, called Permaculture. Considering three main ethics: People Care, Earth Care and Fair Share, we dreamed for a project that everything was connected, closing the cycle between all the people, environment and energy. We really believe that is the solution for most of the problems in this world, we have already enough knowledge for make things right, so our main target is to show and make the example for everyone, we want to influence all the people to live with a different kind of conscience and making real sustainable choices for the future.

When we started Biovilla, we get some help of many organizations and cooperatives. We were a completely new project, so we had our first time of a life, spreading our believes and showing what we were dreaming were a real better, sustainable and efficient way of project. To making things different you’ll need more patience and time than to repeat all the same method and mistakes. We need to learn different skills, bureaucrat tools, marketing, presentations skills, lots of things that you at the beginning you didn’t know that you needed.

For the future, we want to finish all projects in Biovilla, food forest, workshop center for sustainable development, and a place where people can experience the sustainable life style. After finished our actual dream project, we want to go to other part of our country and spread our example and influence other projects and after that, go to developing countries, where this kind of project make a really difference in the real life of needed people. We want to go to Africa, South America and Asia and make a food forest, construct green buildings with local materials and techniques, and show how to produce their own energy – heat, cooling and electric. We really want to make a different in the world, we want to show how everybody can life with the most comfortable way but also in a sustainable way.

One thing you need to know is that nothing is what we dream, there is a really need to adapt the structure, ideas and the way you think to develop your own project. With time and creation, nothing is equal from the starting point, different it’s good, even if at the beginning it’s not easy to accept, on the future you will that was for the best. Changes is a evolution of you project, but never letting go you proposals and ideals. All entrepreneurs need to know that there is no impossible ways. If you really have a dream project don’t give up at the first obstacle, you will find others solutions, others possibilities to realize your project. We “fought” and dreamed for three years before we official began our cooperative, if it’s not so fast ´how you dreamed, be patience, if you really believe you can realize any kind of project.

Eco-agro tourism in Turkey

Eco-agro tourism is an activity that attracts the visitors and volunteers to construct a natural farm and to create an awareness about how natural farming was done before technology. Some volunteers from Turkey started to disseminate this activity. They first started this activity that they were in a eco-life project in Austria. They shared this idea with local authorities. So they were supported by local and found the energy and dynamic to go on for eco-agro tourism.

The Green Basket of Casas Blancas, Spain

“In the past, there was a school with 40 forty children in Casas Blancas, now there are just old people living here”. This is one of the reasons why Susana Romero began her project of ecological farming in Casas Blancas, Murcia (Southeast of Spain). 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Cesta-Verde-de-Casas-Blancas/243009779124382

She worked for several years for the Chamber of Commerce of Murcia, living abroad in South Africa, Kenya, Cuba… and travelling to a lot to other countries she was sent. Those experiences gave her the opportunity to get in touch with other ways of life and different ways of thinking. The result of adding this knowledge to her worries and likes “Consumption, recycling, integration, sharing, learning…” was the beginning of that project in 2009.

BROTE BROTE: an eco-educative tale with a twist from Spain

BROTE BROTE is a different way to play: it is to read, it is to experiment, it is to make mistakes and to be able to get back on track, it is education on healthy, ecological and environmental habits, it is to play in order to grow up. This is how we can define the product of this company.

Miriam López, a woman concerned about the ecosystem, nature, education, children and especially for a job well done, is the responsible for BROTE BROTE, a successful business project. She has been awarded, in less than a year, with the Entrepreneurial Award in November 2013 and 3rd Prize in Murcia Business Competition (January 2014) in addition to having been awarded the EU candidacy Awards education.

BROTE BROTE (www.brotebrote.com) is a tale, an eco-game, an urban garden... in short, is a toy company that helps children get in touch with nature and ecology, promoting disused values such as patience, effort and enthusiasm by growing a small garden at home (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reRANgb0phQ). In order to achieve this the company has created the Brote Brote Kit: it contains a mini-greenhouse, seeds, plant pots, peat moss tablets, a ruler and eventually a tale to explain the children how to produce their own small garden.

Create a value from a so called “worthless activity”: ADEPT Organization from Romania

A sustainable vision (It all started with a vision!)

ADEPT’s mission is to protect the nature-rich, farmed landscapes of the Târnava Mare area of Transylvania, working with and supporting the small-scale farming communities that created them over centuries and who maintain them today. ADEPT aims to give these landscapes and communities an economic future in the 21st century without sacrificing their sustainability and productivity, which are in fact a model of wider significance in Europe.

Do you know that this habitat of wildflowers- rich grassland is almost completely lost in Western Europe?!

ADEPT’s vision is to give landscapes and communities an economic future through sustainable land use that increase long-term productivity and "the essential” innovation in technology as well as in holistic thinking (for instance creating new brands from local products, developing many tourism branches including scientific tourism and biking).

 Let’s have a look on their work and brands http://www.fundatia-adept.org/

ARC(Art-Recycle-Creative) GARDENING in Ankara

ARC(Art-Recycle-Creative) Gardening is to get young people actively participating in voluntary projects within their local and wider communities.
Art, creativity, entrepreneurship, creativity will be used as a tool of engagement for the arc gardening. The team of this project has worked around 1 year as a starter of this activity in Turkey. The main idea behind ARC(Art-Recycle-Creative) Gardening is to promote young people to get an awareness about the environment and to make them more social as the leaders of entrepreneur.   

Environmental Education Center in Somoskőújfalu

 The idea of promoting environmental education in a small village in North-Eastern Hungary was born in 1999. The fundamental goal of the Environmental Education Center in Somoskőújfalu (in the following: SKK) was to provide the local school and community with professional help in environment protection, to raise the awareness of environmental problems and to make people environmentally more conscious. The idea was set in motion quite fast as the members of the organization started working with the local kindergarten and primary school.