The Juá Community-Based Tourism Project incorporates CEN’s growing experience strengthening basic skills and mindsets with a multi-faceted approach to fostering community-based eco-tourism in a group of 16 small communities near the Juá Creek and the city of Santarém, in the Brazilian Amazon. The project will improve community livelihoods, without abandoning unique life styles and culture.

The process of cultivating a strong and sustainable tourism sector in the region requires building community leadership and institutions capable of developing and managing the implementation of a community-wide agreed upon plan that will ensure strong, equitable economic growth, while maintaining the cultural and environmental strengths of the communities that make them an attractive tourist destination in the first place.

To achieve this vision, CEN have partnered with Eunice Sena and Paulo Melo, two seasoned development professionals that live in the area and together have over 50 years of experience in community-based development, as well as experience working with community leaders and other organizations.

Problem

The Juá region has strong touristic potential due to its proximity to the city of Santarém, beautiful beaches, and the town of Alter do Chão, which draws local, national and a growing number of international visitors. The main road connecting Santarém and Alter do Chão also passes through several of the communities in the region. Tourist development will most likely come to the region on its own; however, unless the communities are equipped with what they need to manage the process for themselves, residents of the area will become bystanders, realizing few economic gains for themselves, and risking the loss of their unique lifestyle and culture.

Project Objectives

The primary objective of the eight year project is to increase family incomes through community-based tourism on a sustainable basis.

By the end of the project we hope to accomplish the following:

• Ensure the community is able to execute their unified vision for tourism in the region
• Generate at least 50 new locally managed businesses in the region, such as lodges, trails, beaches, handicrafts, restaurants, and entertainment
• Increase family incomes among the approximately 4000 residents of the region at least 40% through the business opportunities available in the tourism industry
• Make progress to overcome key structural obstacles that would otherwise compromise the long term social and economic sustainability of the region’s tourism initiative, such as social capital, access to credit and markets, strong local commercial value chains for their products, and infrastructure

Project History

Several years ago, Mr. Paulo “Paulinho” Melo initiated community development efforts in the community of Cucurunã, one of the communities in the Juá region. These efforts resulted in the community coming together to repair and beautify community spaces, and to transform a festival honoring the community’s patron saint into an event that attracts visitors from around the region, including the city of Santarém. It instilled a sense of pride and stimulated a growing number of residents, including youth and women, to begin various income-producing projects year-round.

Currently several communities in the region have scattered tourism-related activities, such as selling drinks by the side of the highway or at beaches and a growing number of festivals, but they have been sporadic and not well-integrated. Learn more about this early work (in Portuguese only, but with photos).

In 2010, Mr. Melo and Eunice Sena, another community development professional who has strong ties with the local women’s movement, began a process of holding meetings in each community, in which any resident interested in tourism development was invited to attend. After completing the series of meetings, Mr. Melo organized a general meeting of all the communities to share what he learned. In 2011, this process was repeated. Learn more about the latest action plan that resulted from these meetings (also in Portugese only)

Planned Activities

Phase One - Currently in process through November 2012

CEN will support a continuation of Paulinho Melo and Eunice Sena’s workshops with each of the communities in the region to prepare the foundation for future focused individual and community development. This sort of preparation requires considerable time and patience in order to ensure that residents feel engaged and feel ownership in the process, as well as of the master plan and regional association that will come out of the process.

The objectives of this phase are:

• Facilitate the 16 communities to generate an action plan for tourism in the region. We do not expect the communities to establish their individual and collective priorities by the completion of this phase
• Establish a formal regional association to oversee and coordinate the implementation of the regional plan
• Bring a small group of visitors from the US to experience what the communities have to offer and share their feedback with residents

Phase Two - Estimated to start November 2012

This phase of this Juá Community-based Eco-tourism project will last approximately 24 months and will accomplish the following:

• Create a strong and united cohort of community leaders who will work together to articulate and shape the vision of the community as it pertains to tourism, and create a master plan;
• Strengthen the basic skills of a minimum of 35 key leaders and entrepreneurs using our PRATICAR methodology, in an effort to build a strong foundation for self-reliance;
• Strengthen key community- and regional institutions, such as trade and social associations, and the newly formed regional council;
• Establish community and regional priorities for their tourism initiative;
• Mentor each community to implement at least one of their top priority tourism initiatives;
• Mentor entrepreneurs to produce goods and services needed to meet the growing needs of visitors;
• Assist the communities to attract more visitors who spend an increasing amount of money in the communities;
• Identify and begin to address key structural obstacles to ensure sustainability of the tourism initiative after the project ends, including the building of social capital with other communities which have experienced community-based tourism projects of their own, as well as potential future local government and business partners

Status

Our partners Eunice Sena and Paulo Campos de Melo have accomplished many of the primary goals of the first phase of the Juá Community-based Tourism Project well ahead of schedule. The communities involved in the project have completed a regional development plan, and have successfully organized a formal regional association to coordinate development efforts. These huge accomplishments are necessary for the successful mobilization of the communities.

During the remaining months of this phase of the project, the field team intends to work closely with the regional association and help them organize and build the capacity of ten workgroups focused on different areas of regional development:

• training and organization development
• agriculture
• culture and pleasure
• health
• education
• sport
• infrastructure
• production and product sales
• transportation
• communications

We are currently in discussion with several potential funders for the next phase of the project which will focus on the execution of the community development plan that we hope to begin in November.

Future plans

Future phases of the project will reach an increasing number of community leaders, entrepreneurs and other residents by utilizing some of the first project participant as mentors in the intensive PRATICAR Learning Approach. We will continue to strengthen community leadership and entrepreneur capacity by additional training, and through the establishment of an ongoing partnership with regional training organizations. In order to provide financial capital for starting and expanding local micro-businesses, we anticipate working with local groups to establish and operate community rotating savings funds (ROSCA’s), similar to the Banco da Mulher, for which Ms. Sena was a primary architect. As the capacity of the communities to support increases in tourism, we will increase promotion of the region on the local, regional, national and possibly international levels, and help the regional association hire tourism marketing director.

The final 12-24 months of the project will focus on expanding the number of tourists and the amount of money they spend in the community. This will entail partnering with governmental agencies and marketing partners to formulate a publicity plan for the region, which will highlight the infrastructural improvements and amenities available in Juá. CEN will also transition the responsibility for foundation skills training to other institutions. We will gradually withdraw from the project, leaving full organizational leadership in the hands of a robust and self-sustaining locally led team.

Throughout the program implementation, we will regularly monitor progress against benchmarks and milestones and make any needed adjustments accordingly. Before we leave the community, we will conduct a thorough evaluation of the project to assess our progress towards our stated goals.

Additional Resources

CEN’s Community Based-Tourism Program
What is Community-based tourism?
August 2011 draft of the Action Plan for Community-based tourism in the Juá region (Portuguese) (1.5 MB PDF)
Rural Based Tourism proposal for earlier work in the region (Portuguese) (16.2 MB PDF)