Who we are

The Local Economic Development Agency (Adel) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote local development of rural communities in the backlands of northeastern Brazil through entrepreneurship and social involvement of young people and rural farmers.

The creation of Adel is a result of the mobilization of rural communities youth in Ceará semiarid region who had the opportunity to attend college in the state capital, Fortress, and they chose to return to region, where they were born and raised, to invest the knowledge and skills acquired in favor of local development.

While studying in courses such as economics, administration, agronomy, engineering, communication and social sciences, they understood the importance of knowledge and tools they were learning in class to the development and social transformation of rural communities living.

In 2007, these young people got organized and began to act in the region Pentecost, upstate, where they founded the Adel to support small farmers in vulnerable situations focusing on strengthening family farming.

The headquarters is located in Adel Pentecost, a distant town about 90 km from Fortaleza, and the Training Center of the institution is located in the neighboring municipality, São Gonçalo do Amarante.

Mission

Adel promotes local development of rural communities through entrepreneurship and social role of young farmers.

Through programs and projects, the organization seeks to develop technical and managerial skills with stakeholders and provides them access to knowledge, credit, networks and technologies so that they can find favorable conditions to start small businesses in their communities.

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Our vision is to help develop rural communities endogenously, emphasizing the sustainability of family farming, the formation of social capital and the permanence of the young in the field.

The history of performance of Adel was built entirely in the Ceará Sertão, working with family farmers and their children, living with serious situations of socioeconomic vulnerability. People who found that the resilience was essential component for achieving development.

Resiliency is the ability to resist, to overcome and live with challenges in a given context, advancing in the desired path independent of the obstacles encountered. It integrates the strategies to promote local development of Adel in conjunction with the organization's institutional values.

Values

entrepreneurship

undertake, for Adel, It is the attitude to take initiative to achieve goals and fulfill desires, taking advantage of what you have available: opportunities and potential, vocations, the skills and partnerships. An enterprise is always a project. It can be a a business project, a project to generate social impacts or a project to change or direct the life.

The most important is that represents a breakthrough, a concrete step towards something new, better than before. Something that makes a difference to the life of the entrepreneur and the lives of others involved. Undertake is to transform ideas, dreams and reality in expectations, in tangible results and achievements.

It is also an important process for local development, It expresses the ability of people, key agents of change, to act in their communities and territories, applying their knowledge, knowledge, skills and potential.

Adel works with business and entrepreneurial concepts of social entrepreneurship. With people who find inspiration and motivation to transform their conditions of life and work and their communities, as well as their families, friends and neighbors. And they do it using all the creativity and the ability to innovate.

Introduce the concept of entrepreneurship in the scenario where the acts Adel made the organization specializes, over the years, in acting in high resilience environments - with cases where young farmers ventured together on projects and ventures, overcoming all the hostility and the many challenges of the realities of living and working. Engaging resilience is one of the most challenging processes, but also more rewarding in local development programs, especially in rural areas.

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Social role

Social leadership is the fundamental component of citizenship. It is when each person takes proactive role in the management, in the organization and community governance, city, the territory and the country where you live. When they value their own role to improve the context in which it is inserted, as part of something bigger than yourself.

The social protagonist plays the role of leadership, mobilization, articulation and aggregation to engage partners and allies in projects, actions and projects that lead to positive changes in the lives of people in their surroundings.

Adel believes that social leadership is a prerequisite for local development. Is that, as more people star in organizational processes in their communities and territories, more growth opportunities and strengthening can be harnessed. And driving strategies so that young farmers become protagonists in community associations, cooperatives and other organizational and representative bodies - to voice capabilities to contribute to positive changes in the region.

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Cooperation

It is one of the differences in approach and strategy of Adel: believe how much cooperation, as a value and as a practice, It is able to contribute to local development. Cooperation is a process in which there are complementary forces, compensation weaknesses and task sharing, means, objectives and results, with responsibility and commitment of each party involved. Action there exchanges, reciprocity and community ties.

Cooperation makes the process of taking and social protagonist be much easier and effective to generate results. Through cooperation, an entrepreneur can find solutions in the form of knowledge and a colleague can share a processing structure that adds value to your products.

But what makes it even more relevant for cooperation Adel is the potential to multiply the results and social impacts for communities and territories. As rural entrepreneurs become able to share structures that will allow them all, together, adding value to products and increase their income levels throughout the supply chain.

As leaders in community associations, together, They can complement each other to create and implement building projects forums and agendas and improve public policies that benefit the whole territory. And as young people, together, They can support each other, mutually, to generate new approaches and solutions to market products of family farming in more profitable markets.

The resilience context contributed to the cooperation is a central element of the organization's actions. These actions based on a methodological approach that goes from the use of educational and training elements to assistance for training local clusters (APLs) and territorial cooperatives. Given the scarcity of resources and investments that many communities and youth groups and farmers living, cooperation is a necessary strategy to allow undertake and advance on a project.

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Youth

Youth is a core value since the establishment of Adel, when it was still just an idea. It was just the inspiration and the articulation of youth from rural communities in the Middle Curu, Ceará, the organization was created.

Adel believes in the transforming power of youth and the strategic importance of young people as agents of development, whether entrepreneurs or protagonists in their communities.

Young people can bring new approaches, ideas and solutions, They are attuned to the latest technologies and have a desire to be able to stay in rural areas. Ghana have to learn and, mainly, to apply what they learn in practice. And can help oxygenate and modernize production and management practices as well as boost local economies with models of non-agricultural business, in areas such as services, for example.

But youth is more than the number of young people. It is a concept that is what young people can do and what moves them when they are organized and articulated: from clusters and cooperatives that facilitate and improve business in family agriculture to the creation of networks and forums that contribute to the development and management of public policies for the sector. It is an inspiring spirit that can infect and animate entire communities.

This does not mean that Adel prioritize or just work with young people in the institution's programs. In all actions that develops Adel, always seeking to engage and mobilize youth that exists in communities, as a potential and an opportunity for development.

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Our story

It started well: first a group of young children of farmers who had access to University met and shared their stories.

Then they shared the desire to return to their rural communities and understood that it was necessary to cooperate to contribute to local development.

Promoted study groups each other and realized that they could contribute to the history of their communities by joining what they learned from the knowledge of their parents and grandparents.

They began to exchange ideas and knowledge with farmers and decided to take in their communities and find out how to make them the place of realization of the dreams and desires.

They followed the opposite path of generations. They returned to their communities to complete higher education and created a local development agency to support other young farmers and the creation of local enterprises.

Context

Adel works in one of the poorest regions of Latin America and the world: the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil, more specifically in the State of Ceará. It is a largely rural region. In most municipalities, more of 60% of the population lives in rural communities, many of them virtually isolated, connected with the world only by roads and very poor communication services.

Near 75% of the population living in rural areas is formed by small farmers: families practice subsistence farming on small farms or in rural settlements, working to overcome the challenges of agricultural practice in the semiarid, especially water scarcity. Today, they seek ways to keep productions and basic income for their livelihood in a scenario marked by five years the most severe drought the region's history.

these farmers, with very low education, produce in very poor conditions: practically not have tools and technical and technological resources, not access credit to invest in farms and live with the shortage of water for irrigation and livestock. As a consequence, they can not produce the quality and scale needed to reach the main markets, where they would have better pay.

Rarely can sell goods directly to local markets. So, they are forced to resort to middlemen, commercial intermediaries who buy production in primary stages of the productive chains, for much lower prices than those on the market, and by reselling real prices, market, to add value. Farmers end up with a small part of the economic results of this process, resulting in insufficient family income for livelihood and continuous reproduction of the cycle of poverty in rural areas.

During the first years of operation, Adel realized just how powerful and strategic the role of young people in rural community development and in overcoming all challenges in family farming in the Brazilian semiarid. Adel recognizes that there, today in northeastern Brazil, a generation of young people with the highest educational level of the region's history. Many of them had the opportunity to complete high school and even go to college, which it was little more than a distant dream until early this century. They are connected with what's happening in the world around them and have access to knowledge and information about modern solutions and technologies that could help families themselves to overcome the challenges that exist in living with the reality of semiarid. E, the most important, they can understand the potential of current opportunities to work and engage in the communities in which they live, to transform their lives and their own families.

Since very early in life, youth semiarid communities hear in the family environment and even in school that the safest way they can walk to a better life in the future is to look for a job in a big city. They hear from friends and neighbors, staying in rural areas, in the communities where they live, they will just repeat the family lives, with all the immense challenges. A young leave school early, before completing primary education up, to migrate to cities like Fortaleza, São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro is considered something natural and normal in the region.

But, Adel noted, over the years interacting with communities, that most young people want to stay in the places where they live. That is not their will leave the school, family and the community to try life in another city. they seek, however, opportunities for them to invest the knowledge and skills to improve their own production practices of family agriculture or to start and develop a small business or own design, working with families and with their neighbors and with other local youth. Entrepreneurship is a real and effective way for these young people.

Besides that, Adel believes young entrepreneurs, when developing technical and management skills and take attitude and leadership position, They spend significantly help families of them and also other farmers in the community to improve production practices and management of establishments and rural enterprises. Many young people become leaders in local communities, helping older and more traditional farmers to organize themselves to create cooperatives and clusters, to market together and direct way what they produce and to influence public policies and programs to support family farming. Young people become, ultimately, development agents of the communities in which they live and the whole territory.

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consulting board

BETO PIRES

He worked in the past 19 years in social and environmental responsibility of large national companies. It is a creative professional with experience in the marketing aspects related to causes, advertising and management. He worked at Roberto Marinho Foundation, Globo, ABC group, Clinton Foundation, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, Endeavor, Brazil Foundation, Sou da Paz, All for Education, Citizen action, PLPD (Latin American platform on Drug Policy) and Amnesty International, among other social and environmental actors relevant. He is co-founder of the NGO for Education and Brazilian Entrepreneurs Friends of UNESCO Association.

LUIZ ANDRÉ

Senior Manager of Sustainability and Shared Value Coca-Cola Brazil. Graduated in Social Sciences (UFF) and Masters in Business Administration (COPPEAD/UFRJ).

MAFOANE ODARA

Psychologist and Master in Social Psychology from the University of São Paulo. Coordinates the face area of violence against women and the Avon Institute is part of the Network for Diversity Avon and the Board of the Brazil Human Rights Fund. It has been dedicated to the support and improvement of social initiatives and public services related to fighting domestic violence and the consolidation of diversity programs and human rights, especially related to gender and ethnic-racial relations.

MARLEI POZZEBON

full professor at HEC Montreal and associate professor of FGV. His research interests are focused on innovation and social inclusion, post-development, mobilization and citizen creativity and global-local dialogue. Graduated in Computer Science from the Institute of Informatics (1995) and History from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (1995), has an MBA from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (1998) and a PhD in Management - McGill University (2003).

MÔNICA DE ROURE

Vice President and Executive Director of BrazilFoundation since 2013, working on the development of strategic partnerships and fundraising and foundation management in Brazil. Over 20 years of experience in the social sector, Monica was Director of Brazil and International Operations Program for Latin America and Africa Ashoka Social Entrepreneurs. Bring in your resume one in comparative literature doctorate from UERJ and a master's degree in Social History of Culture at PUC-RJ.

TIÃO ROCHA

Anthropologist “by academic”, popular educator “by political choice” and folklorist “by necessity”. Founder and president of CPCD (Popular Culture and Development Center), non-governmental organization created in Minas Gerais, which operates in the areas of popular education and sustainable community development. Founder and CEO of the Bank of Successes S / A - Solidarity and Autonomy - created in Belo Horizonte / MG. Tiao was part of the Fellows Network Ashoka Social Entrepreneurs and the Avina. He was recognized as Social Entrepreneur by the Folha de São Paulo and the Schwab Foundation.

Administrative Council

ADRIANO BATISTA

Chairman of the Board of Directors
Co-founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors and current Executive Director of Adel. zootechnist, always acted in institutional management and led, since the founding of Adel, the technical assistance projects with farmers. He served as Director of Technology and Innovation in Extension CENTEC Institute, as Protagonism Student Coordinator at the State Department of Education of Ceará (Seduce / EC) and Education Program Cooperative Cells (Commodity).

HELANO LUZ

Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors
Co-founder, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors and current CFO of Adel. Since 2001, active in social organizations that promote local development. Degree in Agronomy, acted implementation and technical assistance projects to support Family Agriculture. It has extensive experience in management and administration of social organizations with an emphasis in finance.

AURIGELE ALVES

Member of the Board of Directors, partner and Director of Programs in Adel. It has experience in social project management area with activities in the cultural and technical advice to young farmers. Previously, He served on the Family Agriculture Project Agroecology and Market the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The trajectory of her in Adel began as a young beneficiary of the Young Rural Entrepreneur Program. It's in Agricultural Technical and graduate student in Business Administration.

EVILENE ABREU

Co-founder, member of the Board of Directors and Director of Communication Adel. currently, also accumulates Professor function Auxiliary Advertising Course and Propaganda School Cearense. It has experience in the area of Communication and Marketing of the Third Sector and projects and research on rural youths, social entrepreneurship and audiovisual interventions. He served as Social Educator in the Project and young-developed by Ashoka in partnership with the Secretariat of the State of Ceará Education (Seduce / EC). It holds a degree in Advertising and Master in Communication from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).

GLÁUCIO GOMES

Local Development Management Specialist. Has 15 years of experience in strategic planning, management, fundraising and evaluation of programs and development projects and social investment initiatives in Brazil. He served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator in BrazilFoundation for five years and as Executive Director in Rummos Advisory Research and Evaluation which follows as a Consultant, already nine years ago, working with companies, institutes, foundations and civil society organizations in Brazil and internationally. Was Consultant Specialist Socioeconomics for Transnordestina the past two years and acts, still, as Senior Advisor to the United Nations for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO).

WAGNER GOMES

Co-founder, member of the Board of Directors and Director of Business Adel. Economist and expert on local development, It was recognized as Social Entrepreneur of the Future by the Folha de São Paulo and the Schwab Foundation in 2010. Part of Fellows of Ashoka Social Entrepreneurs Network and the Network Sheet Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. It was Senior Advisor to the United Nations for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) and acts, still, as a consultant in developing strategies for social organizations of Ceara.

MIRLANIA LIMA

Member of the Board of Directors and partner of Adel. He served as CFO of Adel between 2009 e 2013. Bachelor's degree in Accounting from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). He worked at Company P&Accounting and P, currently, Financial Advisor's Advocacy Center of Herbert de Sousa Life (CDVHS). Is Project Financial Coordinator at the Association for Development Co-Produced Location (ADELCO).

supervisory board

MIRLANIA LIMA
President

CRISTIANO SEVERINO
adviser

HÉLIO PIRES
adviser

Team

ADRIANO BATISTA
CEO

"Contribute to the development and permanence of people in the countryside with dignity and quality of life is what drives me. I was young farmer and I know the great challenge facing a rural youth to develop socially and economically in the outback ".

HELANO LUZ
CFO

"I am very proud to integrate this team that has changed the reality of many people, mainly rural youth, through cooperation and entrepreneurship ".

GLÁUCIO GOMES
Director of Development

"Being part of the team Adel is to have a valuable opportunity to work directly for the local development of creative and resilient communities and young people able to leverage social transformations that impact thousands of people".

EVILENE ABREU
Communications Director

"I am grateful to be part of this story, by learning and see that dreams collectively constructed can come true. In each project and action that I perform in Adel, Renew the hope that it is possible to build a better world ".

AURIGELE ALVES
Director of Programs

"The opportunity to contribute to the realization of dreams and improving the quality of life of rural youth from entrepreneurship in Adel is my motivation".

WAGNER GOMES
Business director

"Being part of Adel means to live with a team of young entrepreneurs passionate about the cause and who believe it is possible to give a new face to the Brazilian backlands".

RAQUEL FERREIRA
Project coordinator

"Adel is an institution that values team development, and it makes me feel good as a person and as a professional. Know that I am collaborating in the realization of dreams is inspiring ".

ILYS SANTOS
Project coordinator

“The compromised profile Adel is my main motivation. I believe that from the local development can generate knowledge and thus contribute to other regions also change to better their realities”.

ALINE PERDIGÃO
Administrative coordinator

“Working in Adel was an opportunity to deliver a stroke goal for me, formed back to my town and work in my area of training that is administration. I have admiration for all that is Adel and be part of this team is rewarding”.

GESCILENE BARBOSA
Project Specialist

"Being a collaborator of Adel is part of a multidisciplinary team that gives me a lot of knowledge from other areas. Glad to be able to contribute to the realization of the activities ".

PAUL SECOND
Project Specialist

"It's a great opportunity to collaborate with Adel in the construction of their mission and sustainable development of rural communities in Rio Grande do Norte".

POLLYANNA QUEMEL
Project Specialist

"Be at Adel is a great achievement. With your ethics and work, stimulates the freedom and the capacity of young people to take on your own development, creating a positive impact on the transformation of realities. The Adel is a valuable institution”.

DAMIÃO SANTOS
Project Assistant

"Being part of Adel is to contribute to the strengthening of family farming and go a little further towards the sustainability of our beloved Brazilian semi-arid".

LELIS DUARTE
Project Assistant

"Adel is a unique opportunity of development and transformation for rural youth. I am grateful to have been benefited and young power today part of this team, further contributing to local development ".

FÁBIA OLIVEIRA
Project Assistant

“Working in Adel is look at my career and see the result of it. Realize how much I evolved and grew, learned while young benefit and learn even more as monitors”.

EDILARDO SALES
Project Assistant

"Being part of the team Adel is to have the opportunity to collaborate in the realization of dreams and the development of the region".

KÁTIA SILVA
Communication assistant

"Working in Adel is a chance to exercise my profession dynamically and innovative, always with the opportunity to meet new challenges. In addition to working in an organization with a vision for the welfare ".

ELIONARDO OLIVEIRA
Communication assistant

“I'm glad to be part of Adel and contribute to dissemination of ideas and life stories. The opportunity to provide development is something aggrandizing.”

BRUNNA BASTOS
Development Assistant

"Being part of this team is a unique opportunity. My motivation is to continue developing a vision at the same time that the institution does not forget its roots. "

LEYDDI FREITAS
Administrative Assistant

"I am grateful to be part of this team and contribute to the realization of dreams.
Being part of Adel is to have the opportunity to provide development, both people and place "

NÁIDE MATOS
Financial assistant

“Being part of this team is a personal and professional pride. Working with those who create opportunities for other people is a responsibility and motivation to carry with me”