In 2019, the Córrego do Feijão dam broke, throwing thousands of gallons of mining waste into the city of Brumadinho.
In the first few minutes after the breakup, a community group call Associação Nossa Cidade started a WhatsApp group to help. Within a day, the group had more than 250 people, and they quickly set up a grassroots crowdfunding platform; they raised $150,000 reais in a few weeks.
In March this year, we spoke with Cléber Rodrigues, who was deeply involved in the effort, and looking at what is happening now in Rio Grande do Sul, we understand that the experience of the Brumadinho Fund can inspire medium and long-term actions for the resources being raised.
What was the origin story of the Brumadinho Regenerative Fund, and how did you get involved?
In 2019, the Córrego do Feijão dam broke, throwing mining waste into the city of Brumadinho. In the first few minutes after the breakup, Associação Nossa Cidade started a WhatsApp group to help, and the news began to arrive... Within a day, the group was full: 256 people, and they started talking about fundraising. The next day, the crowdfunding campaign was ready, and donations began arriving.
In the first weeks, there were already 150 thousand reais. In the days following the dam collapse, resources were sent directly to people to buy water, fuel, and whatever else was needed. A week later, the Fire Department Rescue Crew warned that the number of volunteers circulating around the city was hindering rescue efforts.
At this point, the resource had already been raised and needed to be used, and at this point, the Nossas Cidades Association stopped to plan what to do with the resources. An alliance was formed between organizations in Brumadinho and surrounding areas, and it was proposed to create a regenerative fund to, as soon as possible, donate resources to projects within the community for actions that could in some way help to regenerate to heal the wounds.
The alliance waned over time; many suffered significant personal losses and left the coalition. The Nossas Cidades Association remained active and, little by little, managed to mobilize people within the territory to become curators to help distribute the funds raised in grants of 3,000 reais.
Associação Nossa Cidades already had experience with donation circles and knew the Awesome Foundation, which, from this relationship, became the platform for submitting projects in a simple way. In this way, Associação Nossa Cidades continued to support the fund voluntarily with resource mobilization and back office, in addition to articulation with the Awesome Foundation and passing the decision-making power of choosing and evaluating projects to people in the city of Brumadinho. To date, more than 65 projects have been approved.
I was working at the Association when the dam broke, and by 2020 I started getting more involved, getting closer to the people of Brumadinho. In 2021, the Comuá Network called for the Saberes Program, and I signed up to systematize the Fund's experience, which helped us focus our efforts on organizing our thoughts around the lived experience of forming the Fund.
At that point, people in Brumadinho were tired; the rates of alcoholism and depression in the city increased a lot after the dam collapse, and Brumadinho city hall, together with Vale do Rio Doce, were attempting to the narrative to erase what happened and move on with resources that were beginning to be transferred by the company to the people of Brumadinho through city hall.
The Fund was already a little idle when, following the conversation process that led to the systematization of the Saberes Program, we reactivated interest in it.
Why is the fund's model of fast, small grants better? Is it more based on trust? More flexible and responsive?
That model came from studying what was already happening in Brumadinho. The Fund was born out of an emergency, and the original idea was to make larger contributions. Still, the organizations and collectives signing up were unprepared to carry out the process, and perhaps not even Associação Nossa Cidade to make larger contributions.
The idea was that grants would be trust-based. The applicants had several challenges. For example, people did not have the internet to complete the form on their cell phones and had difficulty answering the simple questions proposed. Some projects came from larger organizations and were relevant studies; others came from elderly ladies asking for resources to continue their work before the collapse. At the same time, we took precautions so people would not wrongfully benefit from these resources. We saw quite a few politicians, for example, trying to access funds for electoral campaign projects.
This is a difficult place in practice, isn't it? It seemed to me that you had the intention to offer trust-based grants but were paying attention all the time, for fear of resources being diverted. Is that the case?
Yes, there came a time when we also limited it to 3,000.00 so that if it was misused, there was a limit. But in the end, we only had two examples, out of 57 at the time, that we were unhappy with. The trust placed has been proven to be worth it and still does.
What can traditional philanthropy learn from the Brumadinho Fund model?
Trust. Traditional philanthropy is very bureaucratic; reducing bureaucracy to provide access is important. Also, the proximity to the territory and the people. We experienced this because people were inside, talking to those who accessed the funds.
I only learned that there were other funds like Brumadinho after I had systematized it. I come from the favela, I am the son of social movements and, even so, I had never heard of fundraising and philanthropy in this way… I recently found out that it already happens in many corners of Brazil.
Still, it seems that there is an effort to erase these philanthropic practices, a lack of recognition that it is something that happens and is important for the territory. With the systematization, I started recognizing this practice among people in communities and learned that it happens in other places, not just in Brumadinho.
At the end of your report to Comuá Network, you state that "the management of the fund's main activities benefits from the expertise of the territory's residents and their knowledge of their own needs". Can you tell me more about this?
In Brumadinho they have some projects that, when we look at it from the outside, we think... Wow, that... that's not necessary. But when talking to local people, we understand why that project is important for the person and the place.
I confess that I went to Brumadinho with a feeling of wasted money, but I was wrong! For example, there was a man in a wheelchair who applied fora grant to repair wheelchairs. I thought, really? Maybe better to give it to a tire shop, and they can repair 50 wheelchairs with this money. But he fixed a lot of wheelchairs. He felt alive again and came out of a depressive process when he saw that his work had value for other people.
It has become a reference in Brumadinho! The people who received the repaired wheelchairs told me it made all the difference that he was repairing them. I left embarrassed after a visit like that one, and I realized that people outside this territory can't say what is important and what is not.
In the systematization of the experiences lived through the Brumadinho fund, you say that the fund's model replaces “meritocracy” with “affection.” What do you mean by that?
I'll give an example. When we went to traditional communities in the Quilombo to see the black literature project in schools, which a teacher who received money from the fund to carry out, we saw in practice how his love for the community is an integral part of what was being proposed with the project. A love for the community is part of it.
This goes far beyond the money received. The people who choose the projects, the curators, are from the regions and somehow manage to bring relevance and affection to the choices, more than if we, from Belo Horizonte, were to look at the proposed results only.
This project won, and another one, which planned to plant a considerable number of trees in the devastated region, didn't. We later learned that the planting was, in fact, to fulfill a campaign promise from a local politician. Only the curators knew this.
