Sustainable and Educational Cities is a platform aimed at the social transformation and sustainable development in some of the most impoverished regions of Brazil through a combination of specially designed management and planning strategies, social entrepreneurship, and evaluation programs. The Centro Popular de Cultura e Desenvolvimento or CPCD, based in Araçuaí, has worked closely with the Banco do Brasil Foundation and other organizations in developing projects there since 1989.
The platform relies on partnerships among government, community initiatives, the Banco do Brasil Foundation, and other organizations in a holistic, grass-roots approach to a range of issues facing such regions. The “sustainable city”at Araçuaí, a key city in Minas Gerais state, is an example of the convergence of efforts to house 40,000 people using bio-construction techniques such as super-adobe, dry-toilets, seed production, food forest, processing of used kitchen oil, and others.
