Saving the World, ACDI/VOCA-Style

Building a Business Plan in the Amazon Region of Brazil
By Carolyn Kaiser

It’s not often that any of us can claim to be saving the planet. On my recent ACDI/ VOCA assignment working with a co-op in western Brazil, I helped do just that. At least a little corner of it.

For more than a decade, farmers and cattle ranchers have cleared land by ruthlessly burning the Amazon rain forests. Last year, according to TIME magazine, smoke grew so thick that P6rto Velho, the capital of the state of Rondonia and the city in which I was to work, was forced to close its airport much of the time. Worse, the loss of rain forest is actually changing the earth’s climate.

While I’d worked with ACDI/VOCA previously on projects in Eastern Europe and Russia conducting marketing workshops and helping businesses with marketing and advertising strategy, I’d never considered global climate ramifications. But it was the primary concern there in the middle of the jungle on a tributary of the Amazon helping a co-op write a mission statement based entirely on saving the rain forest.

When all 10 members of the co-op’s board of directors greeted my late-night flight into P6rto Vehlo, I knew this assignment would be special.

The co-op - called Cooperama - was founded by these successful local businessmen and women, each sharing the same dream: To provide financial opportunity to the economically stressed people of the region while helping to restore the fragile Amazon rain forests.

It all began with their purchase of a large area of senselessly burned rain forest an hour’s drive from P6rto Velho, a city with a deep-water river port for easy access to markets. Cooperama developed this land into tracts for the controlled planting of indigenous palmito. Until then, the palm tree had grown wild, and was often destructively uprooted from the rain forest, further damaging the fragile ecology.

A state-of-the-art factory was built that now employs 88 workers to extract and package the heart of palm, a nutritious product that is marketed in Brazil and around the world.

Carolyn Kaiser is president of Kaiser Communications, Inc. of Florida and an ACDI/VOCA volunteer.
The Brazilian rain forest: In the porto Velho area alone, an estimated 12.325 Square miles of Brazilian rain forest have been razed
  • large hydroelectric dam provides electricity.
  • well supplies pure water for packaging.

Today, Cooperama's farsighted managers produce a crop that helps the largest number of people to financial prosperity while reestablishing the rain forest. For every palm tree on the co-op's farm, the area's small, independent farmers grow four. About 400 families currently benefit economically. According to Dinalvo Oliveira, director of Cooperama, within three years the co-op's work will involve 2,500 people.

Ecologically perfect for the region, the main plant is cut, leaving several small plants in the fields where a new generation of palm is produced in eight months. Unused fronds are chopped and returned to the earth as fertilizer. Thus the entire plant is used, a saleable product is created, and the earth is enriched. Each plant has a 20-year life.

The brand-new processing plant operates by surgically clean standards. It is already working at 50 percent capacity - the packaged

product now distributed throughout the region. My detailed three-year business plan prepared for the cooperative calls for future market expansion into the United States and Asian markets, with the plant projected to be working then at 100 percent of capacity.

Already this project generates a substantial tax base for Pôrto Velho and the State of Rondônia. Eventually, the partnership will serve as an example for the entire Amazon region. In the meantime, thousands of acres of rain forest are growing back to a natural state, helping to again provide biodiversity and a return to a more stable world climate.

Cooperama's dream must not be allowed to die before it is completed and reproduceACDI/VOCA has worked hard to further the ecologically sound development process, but much more needs to be done. The rain forest is being reduced to ashes at an alarming rate.

In a year or so, Cooperama will need further advice on how to expand its market to the world. My 11 -day assignment with Cooperama was just enough to whet my appetite for more, and I hope to be back again, this time helping them with their advertising. I wouldn't be surprised if "Help Save A Small Corner of the Rain Forest" isn't part of the advertising message.
Director Dinalvo Alves de Oliveira (left), farm manager Clodildes Lima Nunes (right) and Lenon de Sousa Sena (translator) survey Cooperama's palm trees. The cooperative is providing financial opportunities within the region while restoring fragile rain forests.