Semi-arid Sustainable Development Project in the State of Piauí (Viva o Semiarido)

The project's aim is to reduce the extreme poverty among rural people in the semi-arid region of Piauí State by improving their income, increasing their employment opportunities, and strengthening the capacity of rural institutions.

Despite the poverty and environmental vulnerability in the project area, it has potential for economic development. Most of the 23,000 poor rural families who will participate are small-scale farmers whose livelihoods depend on farm and off-farm activities such as:

honey and cashew production
goat and sheep production
rural tourism
handicraft production.

To reduce rural poverty, the project aims to boost production from the mentioned activities by increasing small farmers' abilities and skills to access to markets. It will do this by:

promoting training and technical assistance on the use of sustainable technologies such as agro-forestry systems, small irrigated orchards and improved water conservation systems including dams
enabling participants to access financial services and short-term credit
strengthening social and productive organizations to give them added bargaining power and access to goods and services that individual people would not be able to get
providing small grants for farm-level investments such as small dams, small processing plants and irrigation systems.

In addition, approximately 5,740 youngsters will receive technical and entrepreneurial training, 12,000 children will benefit from the "contextualized learning" programme aimed to increase their awareness on the conditions of the semi-arid region and about 1,500 teachers will be trained in this approach.

Rural institutions will also get support from the project to strengthen their capabilities to implement rural development policies in the region.

Additional Data