Report

In the heart of the Lower Alentejo, an ecological village, practically self-sufficient, plans to show the way and offer local solutions for global problems, in harmony with the environment. A community which wants to do more and better, at a time when resources are increasingly hard to come by. The bell rings. Once, twice, three times. It’s the signal that lunch is ready. It’s time to rest one’s body and placate one’s stomach. Gradually, the people who have been involved in different tasks throughout the community start to arrive for lunch. Their faces, flushed from working in the scorching heat, …

Sustainable food production – the example of the success story of Risca Grande  It is a cool Saturday morning at the end of October. A group of six students from the Beja College of Agriculture and their lecturer in olive growing are heading for Santa Iria, 30 km away. Shortly after leaving the village, they turn on to a gravel road. A road sign shows them the direction: Risca Grande – extra virgin olive oil. The destination for the trip was carefully chosen by the lecturer Carlos Filipe: after all, Risca Grande has become a model business for organic olive …

More and more buildings in Portugal are empty. Especially houses in city centres. This is something that Arrebita! Porto wants to change by adopting a social enterprise model. If the pilot project succeeds in Porto, where the problem is particularly bad, it could be a sustainable way out of the crisis for the whole country. The streets that lead down to the banks of the Douro are flanked by old buildings. They form part of Porto’s Ribeira old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There was a time when their colourful tiled façades sparkled in the sunshine and they were …