The Cerrado Circular Program aims at promoting the entrepreneurial behavior and to support the establishment of a cluster of businesses aligned with the commandments of a Circular Economy – Circular Fashion and Sustainable Gastronomy in the Brazilian Savanna;
The geographic focus is the State of Mato Grosso do Sul in the Parana and Paraguai River Basin
By highlighting the ‘value’ to the Natural and Cultural assets of the Brazilian Savanna it will promote and economy based on the sustainable use and conservation of the biome;
The target group is formed by women, the youngsters, traditional communities (indiginous) and groups of the land settlement;
The first phase of he program is formed by a call for entrepreneurs organized in groups (formal and informal), a warm-up session with trainings and lectures, a pitch day in which groups will be selected for further support and mentoring to their start-ups development;
The second phase is formed by a series of mentoring sessions and support with access to credit.
The program encompasses SDG 5 Gender Equality; SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production; and SDG 13 Climate Action.
The entire project runs on and online platform.
The program will be run by a multidisciplinary team:
Angélica Rotondaro (coordination) co-founder of the Climate-Smart Institute, a think-and-do tank to forster businesses that are Pro-Climate and aligned with a Circular Economy, inclusive of gender empowerment. Angélica is a member of the World Economic Forum Experts Platform and an associate researcher at Universidade de São Paulo. From 2009 to 2017 she was the managing director of the St.Gallen Institute of Management Latin America. PhD by the University of St.Gallen (HSG).
Zefa Valdevina Pereira (technical coordination) professor at the UFGD (Federal University of Great Dourados). She has a Master Degree in Botanics by the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (2003), a doctoral degree in Vegetal Biology by the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (2007) and a Post-Doctoral degree in Ecology of the Restoration by Embrapa Cerrado. She has a large network in Mato Grosso do Sul as well as access to the project’s target groups.
Kim Poldner (circular fashion) is an entrepreneur and lecturer about circular fahsion and bio fashion at the University of Waageningen and the Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. She received several case-studies awards, including the ones about the sustainable fashion strategy of the companies Veja and Osklen. She developed a project with dressmakers with the low income population of a Rio de Janeiro favela. PhD by the University of St.Gallen (HSG).