Community Development and Sustainability

Since its founding in 1957, FURNAS has been working toward the development of Brazilian society by generating and transmitting electrical energy. Today, the company runs a complex of 15 hydroelectric power plants, two thermal units, and a transmission system responsible for 40 percent of the electrical energy consumed in Brazil. As a participant in the Global Compact, the company promotes activities for the sustainable development of the communities in the vicinities of its installations, upholding the Ten Principles of the Global Compact.

FURNAS is a member of the Committee of Entities in the Fight against Hunger and for Life (COEP), a human and social development network. Our social responsibility policy expresses the company’s commitment to rallying our stakeholders toward a fair society, in harmony with nature, based on sustainability and solidarity.

Together with COEP, the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE – Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas) developed a methodology to keep an open, ongoing dialog with communities to integrate local actors in the process of territorial sustainable development. As businesses expand, FURNAS has implemented the socalled Integration Nucleus Project, whose principle is to establish a democratic governance culture that seeks to integrate diverse social groups, local institutions, and government agencies to strengthen community bounds – a mandatory condition for local sustainable development. Communities are chosen based on their social, environmental, and cultural aspects, and preference is given to traditional and low-income social groups. Sixteen Integration Nuclei have been implemented so far, benefitting around 35,000 people in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Mato Grosso, and Goiás. This project has shown itself to be not only a social catalyst and local sustainable development facilitating tool, but also an important corporate management tool. Experience acquired in every new social context is gradually internalized, thereby improving governance tools and dialog with communities. The descendants of the former slave community (or Quilombo) of Araçatiba – in the project since 2005 – illustrate the success of the Integration Nucleus Project. 

Housed in the municipality of Viana in the state of Espírito Santo were around 200 families, representing nearly 800 people, in the 2010 census. This community came about when Spanish Jesuits founded the Araçatiba farm, raised the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda Church in 1665, and christened the native Brazilian Tupiniquins, the original dwellers, enslaving them to work in sugar cane plantations. 

After the Portuguese crown expelled the Spanish army, the native Brazilians living there fled, leaving the place empty. In 1849, Sebastião Vieira Machado, the farm’s new administrator, brought 800 slaves from Africa to toil on Brazilian land. After slavery was abolished, the former slaves did not leave the area. To guarantee these former slaves a place to live, Sebastião’s children donated both the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda Church and an adjacent 21-hectare piece of land to the Vitória Archdiocese. As years passed, though, new farmers settled in the area, taking 16 of the 21 hectares donated to protect the former slaves. Today, most of the population works in the capital city of Espírito Santo. Local business is quite limited and prices are steep, so families are forced to buy outside of the community.

Lack of work opportunities and daycare; poor communication between local dwellers; quilombolas and other communities; weak community bonds; lack of communal areas; need to reform the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda Church and build a burial chapel; no professional courses and work for the young; high rate of drug use; no funding for maintaining Congo costumes for a folk group with indigenous and slave influence.

The Araçatiba Telecenter (2006) did research on the local history and produced a video entitled “A Land of Slave Descendents and the Saint’s Heritage” in association with Espírito Santo Federal University. The similarly titled book was produced in association with IBASE (2007) and offered in conjunction with a number of workshops: social cartography to identify quilombola territories; production of Bandas de Congo musical instruments; and local culinary presentations. Courses on the Linux operational system and introduction to IT were offered by the National Service of Commerce. Education for cooperativism, seamstressing, embroidery, patchwork, and gemworks was given in cooperation with COEP. The workshop CosturArt was offered, wherein women learned craftwork, typical dishes, and the young learned hair-braiding, the events of a solidarity economy, and how to market craftwork (2008). There were meetings with local government representatives to streamline social demands as well as meetings with other communities to implement Espírito Santo Quilombola Community Identity Strengthening Program, which represents the legal process for acknowledging the land deeds of these communities (2010). There were also celebrations with Banda de Congo, folk dances, and fashion shows to market clothes made at the workshop Costur- Art, thus helping to integrate the young, adults, and the old, and strengthen the community’s identity (2011).