Brazil Overview
Tourists flocking to sun on Rio de Janeiro’s beaches can catch a glimpse of some of the poverty-related challenges facing Brazil. But to dig deeper, you must travel to the slums outside Rio de Janeiro and around the lush county where nearly 61 million Brazilians living below the poverty line struggle to feed and educate their children while also dealing with the impacts of climate change. Additionally, less than 3 percent of the population controls two-thirds of the land available for producing crops, while 60 percent of farmland remains idle.
Eliane Duarte Gomez picks fruit in Brazil.
Northeast Brazil Faces Heaviest Rainfall in Two Decades
Brazilians Struggling With Rising Food Prices
Spotlight Brazil: Local Community Center Provides Safe Haven for Children
ActionAid in Brazil
ActionAid began working in Brazil in 1999 and today we assist more than 10,000 people in urban and rural areas.
In the rural northeast, we support projects strengthening the livelihoods of family farmers. In the urban slum areas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, we are partnering with local community organizations like the Casa da Cultura, an initiative providing poor and excluded children with a safe place to participate in sports and cultural activities.
ActionAid is also working with Brazilians to safeguard their rights to food and an education. Our work with the landless movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, advocates for peasants' rights and presses for land reform changes.
Each month in 2009, ActionAid is introducing you to our work by featuring one of the 50 countries we are in. We know it can be overwhelming when contemplating the challenges faced by poor people and communities around the world. It can be even more difficult to understand how you can have a role in solutions to global poverty.
But there is hope. Because of our network of supporters and activists, ActionAid is making day-to-day life better for millions of the world’s poorest citizens while working to change the fundamental causes of poverty -- project by project, policy by policy.
We can end poverty. Together. Please join us.
