We present a case study on the Fundação Casa Grande – Memorial of the Kariri Man, which develops its activities in the municipality of Nova Olinda, in the state of Ceará, Brazil. This initiative was analysed under the framework of the concepts of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, from empirical material collected from documental analysis and interviews with the founder.
Regarding the Foundation’s activities, six large areas can be highlighted: arts, music and cinema, communication, sports, research and content, environment, and tourism. Membership is completely voluntary and it is totally managed by children aged between 6 and 18 years old.
Nova Olinda has a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0,637 (data from 2010), population of approximately 14.256 inhabitants. From this population, 27.83% are in an extreme poverty situation and 70% live in rural areas. The project survives in this peculiar and seemingly unfavourable context for 20 years, in a solidly structured way, also constantly evolving for the participants and the local community. It acts independently, without partisan or political links, but since the project has obtained great visibility, they have achieved diversified support from the public and private sector, setting up partnerships which have contributed for the project to gain weight at local and supra-local levels.
The founder’s individual trajectory, Alemberg Quindins, since childhood, already exhibited characteristics of the entrepreneurial spirit (Dees, 2001). Thus giving special emphasis to the manager/innovator, one could say that this is another case of an “innate” entrepreneurship profile. Though true, it is challenging to observe that in the Foundation the participative nature of the initiative and the fact that the founders do not want to be perceived as entrepreneurs, or heroes, given the strong collective dimension of the leadership.
The active participation of the children in the Foundation’s daily activities, as well as all their family networks, leading to the scaling up of its impact, are major innovative features (Mulgan, 2010). Children are seen as the social actors that will promote change in the mission of Casa Grande, and that is routinely and actively perceived in the foundation’s management, mobilizing the evolution of the project towards institutionalization, aiming at levelling the socio-economic differences (Moulaert et al, 2005), while also formatting a model to be scaled.
Production of happiness for everyone involved in the process is the final product of the institution, according to Alemberg Quindins. But the production of happiness is something subjective and here lies the difficulty of measuring its social value. However, observing the participation of the community in income generation activities, the involvement of children and their families in the Foundation’s governance and management, one may build an idea of the solidity of the aggregated social value.
The dynamics developed by Casa Grande allowed creating of bases for identity and cultural consolidation in the city. It has given impulse to the creativity of users/owners through a diversity of pedagogical actions, creating new ways of organization, such as, community enterprises and income generation for the community (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010). This situation allowed what is today one of the fundamental pillars of the Foundation, which is to give opportunities to each individual in the community, both through the children and through the extension of the relationship network, allowing the critical and active thinking for the construction of a global society, which still has individual and local characteristics, more equal and less unfair.
KEYWORDS: Social Innovation, Social Enterprise, Social entrepreneurship, Citizenship, Social participation
Bibliography
Dees, J. Gregory (2001), “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship'”, (versão original, 1998).
Defourny, J. & Nyssens, M. 2010, "Conceptions of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: convergences and divergences", Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1 (1), 32-53.
Frank Moulaert, Flavia Martinelli, Erik Swyngedouw and Sara Gonza ´lez. Towards Alternative Model(s) of Local Innovation, Urban Studies, 42 (11), 1969–1990, 2005.
Mulgan, Geoff, “Inovação Social”, in Azevedo, C., Franco, R.C., Meneses, J.W. (eds.) Gestão das Organizações Sem Fins Lucrativos, Lisboa. Vida Económica, 2010, 51-104
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