Featured Story ‘The Pretty Ones’
This is the story of Jennifer Thaís Santos Fernandes, the secretary of the ASCITO waste picker cooperative that is supported by WIEGO through the Gender & Waste Project.
Read MoreBelo Horizonte
Members of the Coopesol Leste Cooperative sort recyclables in their warehouse. Coopesol Leste is a first-level cooperative located in Belo Horizonte with over 30 members. The cooperative is contracted by the City of Belo Horizonte to collect and sort recyclables. It also has agreements to collect recyclables from a few companies and schools. Coopesol is involved in the Zero Waste Santa Teresa project which includes a composting, a vegetable garden, a recyclable drop-off center and food cooperative. It manages about 250 tonnes of recyclables per month. The cooperative is deeply committed to supporting autonomous waste pickers (who are not linked to any coop or association). Photo Credit: Lina Mintz
About Our Work in Belo Horizonte and the Metropolitan Region
WIEGO has been working in Belo Horizonte with workers’ organizations, NGOs and the City of Belo Horizonte, and in neighbouring cities of its metropolitan region, since 2011 with the goals of supporting workers’ advocacy efforts, building capacity, and advising city officials. Belo Horizonte is the main hub for many of WIEGO’s projects in Brazil.
Goals What Are We Working to Achieve?
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WIEGO has researched climate change impacts in Belo Horizonte city and metropolitan region as part of its climate change mapping. WIEGO is working on climate initiatives including monitoring heat waves and floods, mapping waste picker cooperatives’ contributions to greenhouse gas mitigation (in partnership with municipal cleaning agency SLU, The Prosecutor Office of Minas Gerais State, and the Waste & Citizenship Forum), and preparing climate vulnerability maps for cooperatives’ sorting centres (in partnership with the Municipal Secretariat for the Environment and ICLEI).
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We support multi-stakeholder platforms with technical expertise and/or resources so that inclusive policies are planned, implemented and monitored. Some platforms comprise government agencies and civil society and workers’ organizations, such as the Municipal Waste & Citizenship Forum of Belo Horizonte (FMLC BH) and the Minas Gerais State Waste & Citizenship Forum (FELC), while others comprise civil society and workers’ organizations only, such as the Observatory for Inclusive and Solidary Recycling (ORIS).
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In Belo Horizonte and its metropolitan region, WIEGO works to shed light on health risks faced by workers through research and documentation. We also build capacity on occupational health and safety among workers in informal employment.
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Belo Horizonte is the hub of the Gender and Waste collaborative project developed with the Minas Gerais chapter of the national movement of waste pickers (MNCR). The project has focused on the practical and strategic needs of women waste pickers – who face multiple levels of discrimination – in developing toolkits, building capacity and providing leadership development. The toolkits introduce the key gender inequality themes that emerged in project workshops.
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“As Bonitas” – Women Waste Pickers in Action
The "Gender and Waste Project" is a collaborative gender awareness and mainstreaming project developed by WIEGO and the National Movement of Waste Pickers – MNCR. This video, co-produced with women waste pickers from Brazil, traces the genesis of the project through the voices of the participants themselves. It explains the methodology, tools and various interventions of the project which are then linked to the present day with the launch of the "Gender and Waste Action Plan 2021-2023" drafted during the first wave of COVID-19.
