**PURAVIDAonline**

the farm has now a Facebook page !

look for “Fazenda Puravida”

friends of Puravida, please tag photos of your time at the farm and leave a comment about your experience to share with others!

Also check out the PURAVIDA Network page on WiserEarth

The last Puravida season has seen a lot of changes at the farm,  a lot of visitors,  friends and family who have come to stay and helped make our time there very special.  We had several friends staying long term with us who really helped to make a difference and dedicated a lot of their time and effort.  A very special thank you goes out to Alex,  Jamieson,  Flore and Papa Noel who all contributed in their own way for many months.

Check out the 6 months update : PURAVIDA Newsletter June 2008

posted by elinzinha

This season of Puravidaness has now come to a close. The last six months have been eventful and wonderful, full of challenges. The farm now has a basic infrastructure with a water system providing water on top of the hill thanks to the worlds first floating RAM pump and extended permaculture gardens providing pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, rocket, sweet potatoes, mandioca and herbs. A wide variety of fruit trees have been planted all around the hill such as papaya, goiaba, mango and banana.

The farm now also counts with two functioning rocket stoves. We have also made a rocket stove together with Vera and Ivan in their house so that they are now able to spread the knowledge of how to build a simple but energy efficient stove with materials all available on the land.
All houses have had decorations from visiting artists- we have two decorative black boards, a rainbow snake covering the whole of one room and a mural on the communal house featuring cacao, flowers, waterfalls and capoeira that has been a collaborative effort between various visitors.

This season has been culturally rich with theatre workshops, performances, arts projects and roda’s de capoeira, all involving the local families and the surrounding community.
We have had several long term visitors who have become part of the Puravida family and have all contributed significantly in their own ways. A big massive THANK YOU to ALL of you who came and helped and made our time there very special. Some of you were there for a week, others for four or five months, everyones presence was equally important and appreciated.

published by elinzinha

Autumn has now arrived in Bahia, tropical rain showers replace intermittent hot sunshine, turning roads into mud slides and tripling the gardens in size.
And talking about water, our watering systems are now all up an running. The floating RAM pump experiment ( possibly the only floating RAM pump in the world!) has been working sucessfully for several weeks now. We have subsequently installed a huge water tank and watering systems, including a watering can shower amongst the banana trees and a zen stone art installation with a little flow of water.

The theatre workshops culminated successfully in a performance for the whole community. The mums and the dads and the whole football team came to watch the kids perform their own story of the Fazendero, his wife, his lover and the chicken thief.

The Puravida crew also took the opportunity to make a play based around their perceptions of eco tourism, waste, consumption and the gringo´s arrival in chocolate paradise. The old ladies squeeked with laughter and everything finished with a fire show and lots of chocolate for everyone.

The rocket stove has been rocket fuel for the last weeks, working like a wonder. We have now found a perfect source of really good clay and have started building one at Vera´s house together with the family.

The last few weeks we have spent lots of time with the workers discussing the future of the Fazenda, talking contracts and the possible association with the CABRUCA cooperative which we are visiting together this Friday.

We also had a brief addition to the Puravida family when Jose brought back his daughter Dani who had been severly mistreated by her mother in Ubaitaba. Dani came to live with us for a few weeks and we started the process together with Jose to apply for custody. While waiting for Brazilian bureaucracy to happen, Danieli~s mother came and took her back to Ubaitaba. We are now working to get the custody for Dani to allow her to come and live on the farm again.

published by elinzinha

Workshops have now taken off with the local kids, working both in the little village of Agua Fria and at the farm itself with the kids from the immediate surrounding area. We have been working with creative games and drama exercises to work on self confidence, body awareness and the idea of creating a story. The group of older children have now fully embraced the idea of theatre, which was initially strange to them, and are creating their own stories that within themselves deal with a lot of social issues such as alcholism, infidelity and the arrival of the gringo’s in the village. We hope to develop the workshops into a participative theatre that involves the whole community.

During the last few weeks we have been concentrating on our water systems. The permaculture gardens where we grow vegetables and herbs are located on top of the hill and watering is currently a heavy job involving carrying buckets of water up the hill. By installing a RAM pump we hope to be able to provide a proper watering system for the gardens that will allow us to extend them further.

We have also started to look at ideas for Rocket stoves, energy efficent clay stoves used in many rural parts of the world to great sucess. The Rocket stoves would also have chimney pipes which would avoid the great amount of smoke the women are currently inhaling while cooking. We have been sourcing some clay on the land to use for a trial experiment. If this works sucessfully we will build Rocket stoves for all the families on the land which will also give them an opportunity to learn how to make them.

published by elinzinha

Financing sustainable energy, waste and water systems is one of the challenges faced by Puravida. Charitable donations are one way – (and very welcome indeed!), but to finance the project for the long term and to help support projects that can benefit the wider community there needs to be another solution. An evolution of carbon offsetting may just be one way to do it- bring on the dawn of Carbon Onsetting. Carbon Offsetting has become a well established method of generating finance for carbon mitigation projects. These projects include energy efficiency, renewable energy, sequestration or reforestation schemes. These are projects that claim to make exact carbon reduction for another carbon emissions. These are projects that otherwise would not go ahead. Carbon Onsetting also finances carbon mitigation projects that would otherwise not be able to go ahead. These projects however do not claim to make any exact reductions; estimates are made. People can chose to onset an estimated about of carbon dioxide to fund only projects that have an additional community or environmental benefits; there is a need for the project regardless of the carbon reduction that results. Onsetting is honest & upfront; Onsetting is low cost and ensures that more money goes into the projects. Blue Ventures Carbon Offset (BVCO) holds the basic principle of onsetting true in its current community stove programme in SW Madagascar. Puravida will now be linking with BVCO to fund Carbon Onsetting projects in Brazil. These projects will range from Biogas units, to water pumps, to solar lighting schemes, to solar stoves and fuel efficient stoves. This will launch on www.bvco.org.uk in the coming month. We will keep you posted. Then all can onset any carbon guilt they have through carbon mitigation projects that will truly benefit the people and environment of the Itacare region. Email ellie@blueventures.org for further information. Posted by ellie (disguised as Elin)