Country: Brazil

Organization: Projeto Bagagem

Year the initiative began: 2002

Project Website: www.projetobagagem.org

Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions:

• Main barrier addressed: Corporate monolithic approach to tourism
• Main insight addressed: Develop community assets

Youtube upload:

What is the goal of your innovation?
Projeto Bagagem aims at improving the livelihoods of Brazilian traditional communities by developing and implementing local development alternatives based on community-based tourism.

How does your approach support or embody geotourism?
Projeto Bagagem’s team identifies established NGOs that are important references in their area of expertise (health, education, environment and so forth), and through a collaborative process develops an itinerary of community based tourism that represents source of income for local communities, and a learning experience for the visitors. At the same time the project develops commercialization partnerships with travel agencies, invest in capacity building programs for local youth to own and manage community based tourism activities in their area and is setting dialogues with the Ministries of Tourism and Environment, state secretaries and other similar initiatives in order to enhance public policies in community based tourism in Brazil.

Describe your approach in detial. How is it innovative?
Projeto Bagagem’s innovation is based on its 3 programs 1) Network of Community-Based Tourism Destinations - Supports the creation of new community based tourism itineraries, identifying potential partners and communities, providing capacity building programs and technical support to local youth and community leaders and exchange among itineraries. The network of destinations is now working in the states of Bahia, Pará, Paraná, Maranhão e Minas Gerais 2) Network of Commercialization - Promotes and organizes groups of tourists and helps the creation of private partnerships with travel agencies, tour operators and organizations in order to set a transparent partnership to benefit the local communities. The project is now (2008) starting to develop a new commercialization business model exclusively to commercialize community based tourism products in Brazil. These products are the itineraries created by Projeto Bagagem with its local partners as well as other destinations which were created independently of Projeto Bagagem such as Prainha do Canto Verde, Fundação Casa Grande and others. 3) Network of Knowledge - Systematizes the methodologies of the Destinations Network to provide materials for other communities and projects interested in developing community based tourism. This program also work with Ministries and other governmental bodies dedicating to making community based tourism part of public policies in Brazil.

What types of partnerships or professional developement would be most beneficial in spearding your innovation?
The challenge Projeto Bagagem will face now to scale up is creating an innovative model for the commercialization of the community based tourism destinations which are being structured. Partnerships with organizations that can help planning and structuring this model is highly important. Strategic planning, elaborating a business plan and marketing research are welcome at this point. Partnerships with responsible tourism travel agencies around the world, national and international airlines and communication experts to develop promotional materials and campaigns are important as well.

In one sentence describe what kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Projeto Bagagem aims to set Brazil as a reference position in the offer of community based tourism destinations and fights for implementing a fair value chain in tourism.

Describe the degree of success of your approach to date. Clearly define how you measure quantitative and qualitative impact in terms of how your approach contributes to the sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
The measurement of Projeto Bagagem success is done by a set of qualitative and quantitative data, as describerd below. To avoid negative impacts all decision making process is done with the participation of the community. Network of destinations: four itineraries created and two being developed, 11 young leaders joining the three years capacity building program, 16 benefited communities, four exchange trips for community leaders done, two community based tourism events with eight partners NGOs and environmental ministry organized. Investments in community lodging infrastructure done in two communities in Bahia. Network of commercialization: 15 travel agencies and organizations as partners, 19 groups of visitors since January 2007, more than US$ 15,100 generated directly to the communities and partner NGOs in 2007, one roadshow trip to Europe contacting 13 organizations and travel agencies network to present Projeto Bagagem. Network of knowledge: two meetings with representatives of the MInistry of Tourism, one meeting with the State Secretary of Tourism of Bahia state, a systematized material about the two years process of capacity building for young leaders in Lençóis, Bahia. Besides all that, Projeto Bagagem was one of the five winners of the Seed Iniatitive (www.seedinit.org), had its capacity building program for young leaders recognized by Kellogg Foundation to spread it to another four places in Brazil and Ashoka has nominated Projeto Bagagem's president, Cecilia Zanotti, as a social entrepreneur.

How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Projeto Bagagem sets partnerships with highly qualified local NGOs. The idea of each itinerary is that the visitor will get to know the region (Amazon, Chapada Diamantina, Coast, others) through the direct contact with local traditional communities where social and environmental solutions are taking place. The trips are practical classes of solutions in the fields of education, environment, health, mobilization and others which are being implemented for 10, 20 years, by the local NGOs. As the guides are local community leaders, masters of traditional sciences and crafts who will share their stories, fights and knowledges, the relationships established are deeper, going further beyond a service provider and a consumer buying a one week trip holiday. It is about becoming part of the solution which is being implemented by choosing to experiment a different way of traveling. It is about recognizing cultural value, supporting communitarian projects and learning with new realities.

In what ways are local residents actively involved in your innovation, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Local residents are ahead of all trips. They plan the activities, reception, food and lodging. Projeto Bagagem also conducts the project of education of young community leaders. These young leaders actively participate in discussion and decision on profits division, management models to generate communitarian funds, principles, best ways to make infrastructure investments, how tourism can support environmental projects in the community and others. It is an intense, long term process of participation and common decision. Evaluation meetings happens after the trips as well as workshops during the year. Another way of community participation are trips with community leaders to exchange their knowledge with other experiences of community based tourism in Brazil. Four trips have been organized until now.

Describe how your innovation helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues. How do you motivate them to act responsibly in their future travel decisions?
The trips activities are planned and conducted by the community. Besides observing, the activities are planned to involve the visitors in a learning experience. Singing and dancing rituals with the visitors, producing manioc flour or fishing, extracting and trying honey after visiting the beehives, trying to make local handcrafts from a palm tree leaf and a talk to midwives about ancestral knowledge are some examples. None of this are touristic folklore presentations. They are real life rituals, jobs, projects and knowledge, which are alive in the day-by-day of the community and now can be known by sensitive travelers seeking for a closer look at Brazilian culture and worried about how their holidays money will affect locals. Information is also given in printed materials during the trip, and electronic newsletter is sent after every 2 months.

Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Every trip is sustainable but they are not sufficient to finance the organizational expenses. The Projeto Bagagem small staff (3 people) are paid by Ashoka, Kellogg Foundation and SEED Award. The idea is that Projeto Bagagem supports partners NGOs for 2 to 3 years to help them structure the community based tourism activity, their own local partnerships and model of commercialization in order to become independent of Projeto Bagagem after this time. This is already starting to happen in 2 destinations. Today there is demand from individuals, NGOs and travel agencies to join Projeto Bagagem trips and networks, although we do not have any market assessment done yet. This task is schedule to happen in 2008.

How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
From 2007 until 2010 Ashoka and the Kellogg Foundation are financing mainly the Destinations Network and part of the Knowledge Network. In 2008-2009 the SEED initiative will also support part of the Commercialization Network. In 2007 the annual budget was US$ 82,000.00 from grants and other private donations and US$ 48,000.00 as revenues generated from the trips (21% for local communities and youth, 10% for NGOs, 10% to Projeto Bagagem and 59% other travel operational costs). One full time person in the staff and one part time. Volunteer staff in graphic design and translators.

What is your plan to expand your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
Projeto Bagagem's goals until 2010 are: Network of Destinations - 15 itineraries created in partnership with local NGOs in Brazil (specially North and Northeast) Network of Commercialization - 1 profitable model of commercialization implemented, selling the itineraries, paying its costs and investing its profits in the social projects, with more than 30 partners among responsible tourism travel agencies Network of Knowledge - 1 book and 1 movie about the methodology of Projeto Bagagem, more than 100 free medias articles and notes (today there are around 40) published, and at least 2 implemented actions in partnerships with State Tourism Secretaries and Ministries

What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
The main challenge is to balance expanding number of destinations and creating a viable commercialization model.

What is the origin of your innovation? Tell your story.
The main inspiration behind the operation of Projeto Bagagem were three main problems identified by its founders as crucial development issues to be addressed, namely: 1) Insufficient income generation alternatives for communities from Brazil’s needy Northern and Northeastern regions widen the social and economic gap between rich and poor; 2) Tourism-related activities in Brazil are apparently growing. However, they reproduce a model that reinforces income concentration, rather than putting forward alternative models that include and benefit the visited communities; 3) There is a general lack of knowledge and awareness about the reality of the majority of the Brazilians from the perspective of innovative and successful development solutions carried out by locally-based organizations. Aware of these three trends, Projeto Bagagem was created by two university friends, Mônica Barroso and Cecília Zanotti. After graduating in Business Administration in São Paulo both chose to direct their careers to the NGO sector, and joined Brazilian funding organizations. Along their work with various local NGOs their wish to set up their own social initiative to contribute to Brazilian communities grew. At the same time, thanks to their previous professional experience they came across a number of innovative and successful local development solutions, and realized that those experiences were vaguely known by a wider audience not only abroad but also within Brazil. Also, their close contact with the NGO sector in Brazil demonstrated that while most NGOs working at the community level were extremely skilled in providing local communities with improved basic services in an attempt to fill the gaps left by the government, a common difficulty faced by most of them related to designing and implementing effective and sustainable income generation projects. Thus the idea of giving ordinary people the opportunity to visit such projects, enabling them to experience local life as it is, gain a wider vision of innovative grassroots experiences while generating extra income to the visited communities. During the first semester of 2002 Cecília and Mônica prepared the pilot-trip and developed the project’s guiding principles. In July 2002 the first group of visitors was set up with 7 Brazilian participants from different parts of the country and the pilot-trip was successfully conducted in four riverine communities in Brazilian Amazonia, in partnership with the Santarém-based NGO Health and Happiness Project (Projeto Saúde e Alegria). The preparatory work was carried out in a fully collaborative fashion. While Mônica worked directly with the local partner and the local communities during six months in the construction of the itinerary and discussions on the initiative’s design and implementation details, Cecília (then based in São Paulo) mobilized the media and created a preliminary website that became the project’s main communication channel to attract and inform potential participants. Projeto Bagagem was then starting.

Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Co-founder and president of Projeto Bagagem, I currently work also as a community-based tourism educator in partnership with the NGO Grãos de Luz e Griô in Lençóis, Bahia. I graduated in Business Administration from Getulio Vargas Foundation (São Paulo) in 1998, and started my career in the Third Sector during an exchange program in Costa Rica. There, I worked for the Volunteering Unit of the University of Costa Rica, which focused on promoting volunteer work in Costa Rican National Parks. In Brazil I have worked as a trainee and project assistant for the Ayrton Senna Institute, coordinated projects at the NGO Cidade Escola Aprendiz, experimented an independent consultant career in a number of social organizations until the end of 2005, when I decided to move from a 15 million people city to a 7,000 people town in the countryside of Northeast Brazil to be closer to traditional communities where I could invest 100% of my time in Projeto Bagagem. No regrets!

Please write an overview of your project. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the Google map located on teh competition homepage.
Projeto Bagagem aims at improving the livelihoods of Brazilian traditional communities by developing and implementing local development alternatives based on community-based tourism. Projeto Bagagem’s team identifies established NGOs that are important references in their area of expertise (health, education, environment and so forth), and through a collaborative process develops an itinerary of community based tourism that represents source of income for local communities, and a learning experience for the visitors.

Contact Information
Ms Cecilia Zanotti
President
Projeto Bagagem
Rua da Muritiba, 5
cecilia@projetobagagem.org