In 2015, amongst other activities, we idealised a project to bring internet to the community. Their three main arguments to have internet signal were to call rescue, educational purpose for younger generations, and for business transactions. The association has plans of expanding the activities to create other business arrangements, such as a cooperative to deal with different farming products of the families in the surrounding area, and looking for ways to generate more income and to further develop the community.


In 2016, the project proposal received a grant and support from Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), where we established a cooperation agreement between the APOBV and Laboratory for Embedded Systems (LASSE) of the Federal University of Para. So we installed the equipment to receive internet in four points: police station, health center, school and association building.


The main goal is to develop a governance model to create the conditions to have a consistent income coming from the community, in terms of financial resources, labour or goods exchange. Some technical problems in terms of wired and wireless connectivity arose during the analysis, because of the sometimes extreme conditions imposed by the landscape, such as constant thunderstorms, and unstable trees falling often, as part of forest self regeneration process.
They proposed and built a tower made of local materials that are readily available in the community. However, during the process the team had some insights and challenges, where they identified the “need of resilient structures to keep the hardware antennas and physical structure steady and safe around the territory”. So with active members of the community, the tower was putted down and they built another one out of metal.


- Provide good quality Internet service for the community in terms of adequate contracts and respecting local practices.
- Capacity building on the first generation of management team.
- Create management structures of network governance based in local practices and principles for problem solving. In a way to sustain the costs that come with it.
- Generate income for the association through the provider and through online platforms, increasing the general interest on local matters on the youngsters of the locality.
- Increase the access to political education in the community.
- Offer training for content producer, especially for the exchange of traditional knowledge from the region and from communities around.
- Stimulate the synergy between the academic and productive sector, using circular economy and regenerative development as groundwork.
