Regenera.vc is an organization and network started by three entrepreneurs that deeply believe we must regenerate and make forests sacred while nurturing a regenerative local economy that is abundant enough to invite more and more people into it. The concept of creating a more beautiful and abundant system so that the old one becomes obsolete really resonates with what Regenera.vc is promoting in Florianopolis city and in the state of Santa Catarina, south of Brazil.
Regenera.vc is the organization behind the development of the Permaculture Education Park in Florianopolis, an island in the south of Brazil. This island has been attracting many people connected to the values and purpose of regeneration. However many tourists and newcomers arrive more focused on taking advantage of the beautiful beaches but not necessarily doing this responsibly.
The intention of developing this park in a beautiful place, Praia Mole (one of the most popular beaches in the island), is to attract and invite more and more people to participate in this project while joining a more regenerative economy. The park will encourage visitors to actively engage in permaculture activities so as to learn in a hands-on way how humans can understand and work with nature’s existing processes to help delicate ecosystems recover and thrive more quickly and to a greater degree.
The park will offer various stations focused on different aspects of the permaculture process, from composting and soil preparation to planting and harvesting from edible food gardens, and will also touch on topics such as water captivation, resource conservation and ecological waste treatment, in each case through functioning exhibits and practical models.
The educational aspects of the park will be managed and operated by Instituto Çarakura (www.carakura.org.br), a grass roots environmental restoration institute which has a strong background in environmental education.
This project received the grant of seeds in June 2020, but due to COVID restrictions no collective work could be organized in the land in the past year. In September there was one collective meeting and work on the land with many restrictions, so it was decided to put it on hold and only in July 2021 we were able to start planning collective work on the land again.
All the people that engage in developing this park either working on the land or on setting up the management of it are being paid in seeds. At the same time we are onboarding local sustainable businesses that are accepting seeds for their services and products. We currently have five businesses : Impact Hub Floripa (social entrepreneurial community); Angatu (composting company); Garoa (sustainable cleaning products); Origem (vegan restaurant); and AVIVA (retreat center). These are the first organizations and in the following months many should be onboarded. Regenera.vc is already mapping other organizations to join the local SEEDS ecosystem and they will be local vegan restaurants, agroforestry producers, wellbeing services, learning experiences, retreat centers among others. The organizations that are being onboarded now already count on their own networks to multiply the number of organizations using seeds in the near future.
This project will work as a pilot and based on the learnings on this process the intention is to regenerate many other pieces of land in the region, engaging more people to work on it, getting paid in seeds and being able to use their seeds in many regenerative and sustainable organizations in the city. This allows us to regenerate the Atlantic forest in the island while boosting the regenerative organizations in the island.
Regenera.vc has recently acquired together with another environmental investor a 12 hectares piece of land 2 hours drive from Florianopolis. Half of the land, 6 hectares will be regenerated and the other half that currently is a cattle pasture will be dedicated to agroforestry including native species. For that we are working together with some of the volunteers that contribute to regenerating the land that will be dedicated to the permaculture park and it will be an opportunity to share with the local community the opportunity of regenerating and exploring a forest close to the sea and another one close to the mountains.
Another opportunity that is being explored is to partner with a NGO that does a great work in a local favela to develop projects that create a seeds-income for the local community that engage in regenerating the land in their neighbourhood. This might become a new campaign on SEEDS. Currently, we are still engaging with the local community and checking how we could better cocreate this together with them.
We hope our process can inspire more people to:
- initiate regeneration processes inviting people to work on it;
- launch campaigns in SEEDS to get seeds grants;
- pay the people working in the regeneration of a forest with seeds;
- onboard local businesses to boost the regenerative local economy.
The main goal of Regenera.vc in the next months is to build the permaculture park while developing a local engaged community that will boost the local regenerative economy. These goals are quite aligned with SEEDS and Regenera.vc can be an important facilitator of the spread of seeds in the local economy.
