Harambe

Slide 1: A Way Of Life And An Experience In Sustainability And Governance.

Slide 2: Outlined by the photographs in this presentation, Harambe is an ideal shaped by the writer Dirceu Borges and published as a novel in the 70’s. The beautifully photographed images are the scenarios that unravel before the reader’s eye of a book, Dirceu Borges’s “What are you going to do in December?”.

Slide 3: Borges’s ideological fiction used the acknowledgement of failure from systems supposed to give care for the old age as material to build a revolutionary model of a community designed not only to give people proper care and shelter in the last years of their lives, but also dignity, identity, freedom, love and happiness.

Slide 4: Harambe goes further than just acknowledging the failure of proper care and for pointing out the failure in our society to give old age a dignified place as it’s social image is distorted. It is said that a good measurement of the quality of a society is the care given to their elderly.

Slide 5: Harambe brings this saying to another level as it is a formula that offers the old age opportu- nity to take destiny in ones own hands so people can empower themselves to get the care and the life they choose best for them- selves. Harambe believes the main reason for the ex- clusion of the elderly from social processes is their lack of participation in the production processes. An important tenet of Harambé is the belief that old age is a period in life in which the individual has equally as much to offer as in preceding stages of life since he has progressed much further on the path of life experiences.

Slide 6: Therefore it is seen as a period in which someone has an enhanced ability to discern what is good for himself without taking undue advantage of others or the environment.

Slide 7: The characters in the novel “What are you going to do in December?” envisioned more than just a place to live well. Their search was a life style that would give them conditions to create their own happiness and well being. For this reason, Harambe is a more than a place, it is a life situation where people living in the state of Harambe gather to empower each other using the experience, knowledge and skills learned in their life path.

Slide 8: Many years after he had written the novel, Dirceu Borges was approached by two women who had had a dream to live their old days in an alternative way but they didn’t know exactly how. After reading his novel they knew that described in there was this place they wanted to build. They discovered they had always dreamed of Harambe.

Slide 9: And so, they offered their 68 hectare farm in a small picturesque village in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Slide 10: Peiropolis is today a touristic area. The village has had a chalk stone quarry later interdicted by an English paleontologist because there were found dinosaur bones from aproximately 65 to 80 billion years ago. The local modernized museum and the replica in real size of a apatossaurus atracts many tourists. Peiropolis is also the home of Fundacao Peiropolis, an institution that gives training to people working in education aiming for a culture of peace and there is also the permanent Exposition of “Human Values”.

Slide 11: Surrounding Harambe is an area known in Brazil as “cerrados” . This describes a climate that has traditionally allowed the agriculture, and in Harambe there are pioneer cultures as the “neen” (a tree that comes from India), to carry several therapeutic possibilities. This all in at 12 km from a major regional city of 287.760 inhabitants called “Uberaba”.

Slide 12: That is the décor where Dirceu’s romance has been brought to life, with the idea of being a seed of a social innovation that is able to replicate itself. Lets not forget that the estimates tell us in 2050 the population of people in advanced age will be 4 times as much as it is today 5,1% of the global population. To have this expectation be unaccompanied by expectations of depressing statistics excluding old age of beautiful and fulfilling life, we need to let old paradigms go and believe maturity is able to take with itself the desire of be a protagonist and part of the social and productive networks.

Slide 14: The project’s name- Harambe - is chosen because it means “lets work together”, an expression used in Kenya when they were fighting for their coun- try’s independence. Blessed by its topography and the natural resources of the farmland, Harambe has been able to realize its goal of sustainability with an organic agriculture. It hosts a garden of medicinal herbs considered by the brazilian Health and Food Administration as an example of quality and productivity, and the production of aprox 1000 neen a month.

Slide 15: This is a beautiful place that has been taken care of with endless love and lots of work. It has a wonderful climate, healthy air and mineral water. Its ground is fertile and it is surrounded by lakes filled with fish, 2 forests and it faces 2 different groups of mountains.

Slide 16: Harambe has worked on its infrastructure to stimulate and enhance wellness and productive work, it has instalations for health care and its houses are planned by architects that focused on comfort and security for people of age. The residences are set in blocks of 6 houses, called ‘pueblos’ or in independent chales.

Slide 18: Harambe´s philosophy is that a human be- ing needs to maintain themself in an active way executing work that he or she likes to perform, feeling happy and keep on being the protagonist of his or her own life and history.... it is a life style. Harambe offers peace and tranquility but not isolation of the world. It is within 500 metres of Peiropolis, a village that is continuously visited by researchers of the Paleontologist Association of Brazil, and tourists. The one that lives in Harambe has still participation in social life, contributing with experience in the with young people and participating in courses in Peiropo- lis Foundation for Human Values, and an active life in the Uberaba city a 15 min journey from Harambe.

Slide 19: There is more that could be said about a project idealised over 30 years ago that is in perfect syncronicity with the most recent concepts of sustainable development and based in a firm triptic: social, ambiental and economic development. Being true to the saying that “ an image tells more than a thousand words,” this presentation brings the vision of the place and the ideal through images made by the photographer Luciano Sousa. Now it is up to you to inspire yourself and step in there with your heart.

Slide 20: Would you like to know more about us? info@harambe.org.br We organise guided tours for Harambe and the surroundings. http://www.spauberaba.com.br