The Horta Viva Project: report of a university extension program

The present work concerns a university extension program involving students, developed in the period 2001-2006, the main objective of which was the promotion of social inclusion of a community in the municipality of Fernandópolis, São Paulo State, Brazil, by means of capacity building initiatives, generation of jobs and income, and improvements in food and nutritional security. Supported by members of the city’s Rotaract Club, the project was developed in three phases. The first was dedicated to the empowerment of people directly involved in the production of vegetables, fruit trees, and medicinal plants. This was followed by offering a course on total utilization of food and the preparation of nutrients in such a form as to fully use the available nutritional resources. The third stage concerned the creation and transmission of skills as a means of generating income and employment conditions, by offering courses on the manufacture of homemade cleaning products, food preparation (pasta), fruit and vegetable processing, and the small-scale processing of cassava. The results showed that gains were achieved in terms of the quality and variety of household meals, and opportunities were created for a large proportion of the participants to obtain income following training. This led to a change in local conditions due to the protagonist participation of the population, and contributed to improvements in food and nutritional security. The Horta Viva project demonstrated that university academic knowledge can assist in the improvement of local living conditions, in a manner that is not paternalistic but combines the promotion of human dignity, social inclusion, and citizenship. The project also enabled consolidation of the knowledge of the academics involved, due to their participation in the complexity and richness of a local reality. The success of this pioneering experience resulted in subsequent deployment of the project in northern Peru and in other cities in São Paulo State, Brazil.