26 October 2022: Sinal do Vale in Brazil pioneering Regeneration and Nature-based Learning.

In Session 3 of our transformative Co-Learning Journey of “Unleashing the Power of Homes to Pioneer Planetary Regeneration” we learned about Sinal do Vale, center for the regeneration of ecosystems, communities, and individuals, and exemplary Home for Humanity in Brazil. Located on 200 hectares of protected land just 50 km from downtown Rio de Janeiro, Sinal is an Advanced Post of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves and 1 of 17 certified Global Ecosphere Retreats by the Long Run Initiative in the world. They prototype and teach solutions that regenerate forests, soils, and food systems that can be replicated and scaled in this critical region.

Together with a remarkable team of local and global Change Makers, Sinal launched different enterprises supporting the active implementation of and innovation research towards regenerative practices. Among those: Community-based waste management, use of local resources, water conversation, agroforestry, reforestation, healthy nutrition and eco-tourism.

Sinal was able to develop prototypes of land and forest management and create community activism groups to establish meaningful relationships and decentralised land stewardship arrangements. In this field, Sinal do Vale works as an important pioneer and catalyst for the territory and whole bioregion. In the next decade, Sinal aims at expanding their prospects of reforestation as well as the founding of social impact businesses and agroecological initiatives.

The participants were enthusiastic about the organisation’s ambitious work; Gacheke Gachihi form Kenya comments: “This was such a powerful experiential learning on ecological justice and sustainable ecosystem for regenerative future.” Other participants especially valued the diversity of the team, so Hend Hany from Egypt: “I appreciate your efforts for making such a brilliant community with different cultures, that's incredibly fabulous!” as well as Juan Diego Mujica Filippi from Peru/Italy:” The organic and respectful relation between people and planet is something that stuck with me during the whole presentation. Congratulations on the beautiful work!” We thank the remarkable Thais Corral and Mari Chiba for this invigorating presentation!

Furthermore, we are happy to share a few further insights from participants:

“I'm grateful to be back in this circle here. The presentation was deeply inspiring. One thing that I'm witness to right now is there are a few lodges like the Turtle Island Lodge in Manitoba, where we can start to see some things rising. Here we have some people working towards Food Regeneration and they're deeply creating a wave of change around ‘How do we do that System?’

We have people working around Reconciliation and Peace Building because we still have the Indian Act, we still have massive displacement: the Indigenous People don't own the land but only have access to about the size of Vancouver Island in Canada, if you're familiar. So we have strong Nations, we have strong language revitalization moving right now. I am very grateful to join this as a lot of what's shown here inspires me, including the legal persona of the Waters of the lands and the recognition of the beings that are part of the guardianship of the lands and how that for some peoples are a part of The Circle of Care. Being in and of a place, bringing back their sacred areas, the stories of that place and to understand also the integral or the intrinsic value of those systems that are necessarily unseen is sort of the work that we're starting to lean into now. Just listening to Sinal’s story gives me so much life, energy and courage to continue to follow the threat of the vision that's been emerging. So I just wanted to say thank you so much!” Erin Dixon (Canada), Indigenous Leadership, Reconciliation, Feather Carriers Community

“Thank you very much. Sinal do Vale is very powerful and inspiring as a symbol of Hope for a Regenerative Future. I like the idea of how they have experiential learning and how they incubate many initiatives and the history and the diversity of many people are very inspiring. I think a place like Sinal do Vale can become a model where learning and exchange continue and the incubation of more ideas for a Home for Humanity in a global South as it connects with others.

When you look at the crisis of the world that you're living in and if you want to change the violence that is affecting us, in the form of malaria, the state violence, the poverty, the judicial killing, we need to learn the model that Sinal has applied. So we are doing a tree planting in the memory of victims of judicial killing, so we think to get a home away from the urban life and create a regenerative future that can be modeled, so to create hope against what we face in the urban life.

It's a very powerful model that is very important and inspiring for us to learn from.” by Gacheke Gachihi (Kenya), Mathare Social Justice

“I love the holistic view on Ecosystem, individual and communities and the integration of those three levels and that it is the only way to regenerate ecosystems as well as the individual and communities. We speak about regeneration for all.”

By Martina Dinkel (Egypt), Sekem