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

• 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.