Through building partnerships, the Unidade de Negócios Sustentáveis do IPÊ works to spread the word of the socioambiental cause and give everyone the opportunity to get involved. We do cause-related marketing projects on developing donation culture, new income opportunities for communities, reforestation, education and social mobilisation. See our 2019 results.
picture by: Arquivo IPÊ
IPÊ's experience of organising activites for the conservation of biodiversity in various regions of Brazil spans more than 27 years, said experience is given back to society so we all might further our understanding and contact with nature. To that end, we launched the IPÊ Experience program in 2019, for business groups that wish to learn, understand and experience for themselves the work carried out by our teams. The experience, which takes the participants through seedling nurseries, lectures and native tree planting activities, can also be changed to cater for their interests.
This year, 270 people participated in the experience and planted 1,525 trees in total. Amongst the participants were teams from the Y&R advertising agency as well as the companies Tecnotron, Teleperformance, Havaianas, Tour House and the Ecoswim initiative.
picture by: Ecoswim
With a new participation record in 13 years, the Ecoswim event brought together 960 people split into teams on the 9th of November to find out can swim the most for the environment! A proportion of the money raised will be used by IPÊ and put towards our seedling nursery for the Atlantic Forest.
In 2019 the event raised BRL$ 20,000 for the cause! The highest amount collected since the first edition.
Ecoswim is a swimming team initiative conceived of at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo. Along with the donation via registration fees, the participants receive seedlings from the very same nursery that they're helping to conserve, such as the ipê-rosa, goiabeira amongst others.
E-trip is a Tour House company which specialises in corporate trips and in November launched the "E-trip Green Friday" campaign. For every transaction on the website in that month, the company pledged to plant one square meter of the Atlantic Forest with IPE, as a way to promote offsetting the mass consumption during the month of the Black Friday sales.
The Initiative raised BRL$ 6,360.30 and had various companies taking part: Tour House Corporative, Tour House Eventos, Air France KLM, Gol, Movida, Vivere Viagens, Italica, 123 Espanhol, 123 Japonês, Evento Único, Rock Content and Agência Amigo. With this money, 1,910m² of forest was planted, in other words that's 320 trees and 30 people participating directly.
The partnership between IPÊ and the footwear brand marked it's 15 year anniversary in 2019 (See more in Highlights of the year). Back in May we launched the new collection featuring the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), broad-snouted caiman (Caiman latirostris) and the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja). 7% of the sales from the Havaiana-IPÊ partnership went to IPÊ to help with environmental work. In 2019 the sales raised BRL$ 647,270.70 for the cause.
IPÊ participates of the Movimento Arredondar (Rounding Up Movement), which means that customers shopping at partner establishments can "round up" the price of their shop and donate the extra few cents to Brazilian environmental and social organisations. An individual's donation may not exceed more than BRL$ 0.99 during a transaction. Up to 2019, we were partnered with Luigi Bertolli and Meggashop. Havaianas and Tricard are still part of the movement!
In 2019 IPÊ received a total of BRL$ 46,442.09 This monetary resource is put towards the advancement and strengthening of our work in conserving biodiversity.
Buying a pair of flip flops from the brazilian animal collection isn't the only way that people can contribute to the cause. In Havaianas own shops (in Sao Paulo: Concept Store Oscar Freire, Shopping Iguatemi, Shopping Morumbi and Outlet Catarina. In Rio de Janeiro: Concept Store Rio and Shopping Leblon), customers can round up the cost of their shopping, those extra pennies will then be donated to the IPÊ Institute.
The participation of these partnered shops is crucial if the movement is to be successful. As such we run training courses for sales people and till operators which really makes the difference, both in the partnership working and raising more money.
In 2019 we undertook two more projects: distributing a thousand seedlings of species native to the Atlantic Forest in the Concept Store in Oscar Freire (São Paulo) on World Environment Day the 5th of June, and 15 trainees from Alpargatas visited IPÊ's headquarters in October.
A new way to pay in 2018, rounding up payments via credit/debit card was an innovation thought up by IPÊ, Arredondar, and Tricard (Integrated Martins System). The client can select to round up their payments through the website or Tricard app which is applied from then onwards. The round-up will never exceed BRL$ 0.99. In 2019 the initiative generated BRL$ 4,749.08 for the socioenvironmental cause. Since its launch, 1,500 people have joined in to help the initiative.
Not only involved in the Rounding Up movement, Tricard (Tribanco) has been an IPÊ partner since 2006 through linking their products with us. Every picture by Certo operation in Tribanco means 10 cents donated to our projects and 1 cent from every transaction paid with Tricard is put to the sustainability and strengthening of IPÊ. Total money raised in 2019: BRL$ 48,290.05.
The Atibaia & Região Convention Visitors Bureau (AR&CVB) initiative means that Turista+ encourages cooperation between visitors to the Atibaia region and the Atlantic Forest area through partnerships with the hotel chain and the transaction of goods and services. Turista+, which is part of the "room-tax", is a voluntary payment made by the guest which goes to IPÊ.
This small contribution from guests not only helps fund research and environmental protection work but also covers the cost of personal accident insurance during their stay. In just 2019, more than 14.2 thousand people opted into the room-tax and to support IPÊ, which resulted in BRL$ 7,703.75 being donated to the cause.
More than 52,000 tourists have already joined in on the project which is equal to 20,000 seedlings farmed or planting 1,000 native trees.
To ensure the project's success, Turista+ relies on the various teams of hotel staff to inform and explain the initiative and its results to the guests. In 2019 we trained up 45 staff at the Hotel Vila Verde, Atibaia Residence Hotel, Tauá Hotel and AR&CVB network.
IPÊ wants the communities that it works with to engage with and get involved in learning about the importance of biodiversity and conservation. One of the ways to do it is showing them alternative ways to generate income which then strengthens these communities. Check out some of our initiatives:
These communities that IPÊ works create products which can be bought through the site shopwww.lojadoipe.org.br The work done by the embroiderers from the Sewing the Future project in Nazaré Paulista (SP) is amongst the products for sale, as are the bath sponges and agro-ecological coffee from the agrarian reform settlers of Pontal do Paranapanema (SP), as well as T-shirts produced by volunteers such as designer Fabio de Sá.
picture by: Manu Guimont
Between sewing circles, production and environmental education offices, the project teaches production, marketing and sales to a group of nine women from Nazaré Paulista (SP). Not to mention education around the biodiversity of the Atlantic Forest that they live in too.
Their work is a reflection of the critters and the forest; the style is a result of meeting with volunteer designers. In 2019 the designer Simone Nunes held another production meeting with the women.
With the C&A Foundation, the group of embroiderers participated in four events this year, the first a workshop for employees of the C&A head office, the Feira do Bem in Praça Milão, São Paulo, and the Virada da Virada in Bienal do Ibirapuera, also in São Paulo. The ladies came along to the Atibaia Festa de Flores e Morangos in 2019 and raised BRL$ 2,260.00 for the group.
For the fourth year running, and with around 5 thousand attendees, we took part in the 39th Festa de Flores e Morangos in Atibaia this September. The city of Atibaia is of great interest in terms of environmental conservation as it's home to endangered species of flora and fauna of the Atlantic Forest, as well as water resources that feed into the Sistema Cantareira. That's why we, with help from the Associação Hortolândia de Atibaia which runs the event, always endeavour to raise awareness of the issue at the event.
Apart from the environmental awareness stand, up for sale were the products made by the Nazaré Paulista communities as well as the saplings of trees native to the Atlantic Forest grown in IPÊ's school nursery.
picture by: Arquivo IPÊ
picture by: Ilana Bar
Commited to providing education and sustainability solutions to everyone, we created the "Sustainability Game" (Sustentabilidade em Jogo). Devised by ESCAS professor Marcos Ortiz, the tabletop game provokes debate and reflection on the topic of sustainability while at the same time prompting a sense of teamwork between the players. Through analysing, in a fun way, our perceptions on the topic, the game facilitates not just learning but also knowledge recollection. The game's real highlight is the challenges which require teams to strategize and solve real problems that today's organisations and experts face.
The game can be customised to best suit the institutions/organisations that want to use the game in their work too. In 2019 the game was played at Havaianas and during two meetings with Grupo GV; which brings together business leaders in the Nazaré Paulista region to discuss leadership, entrepreneurship, sustainability and personnel management.
The campaign Um Dia no Parque (A day in the park), held on the 21th of July by Coalizão Pró-UCs (Pro-Protected Areas Coalition), which we're a part of, promotes activities in Protected Areas across the country. The aim is to foster a culture of tourism through commemorative days so protected areas and partnered NGO's, organised visit groups and companies offer activities which, beyond just for recreation, open participants eyes to environmental awareness.
Climate crisis is a reality. So to face these socio-environmental challenges of the coming years, the startup Youth Climate Leaders is giving young people an intense training crash course to help combat the problems. Over the course of 2 months, 35 young people aged from 17 to 37 attend classes, talks and socio-environmental experiences which aim to reduce the impact of climate change on our lives. To round off the intense course, the group chose to spend a day with researches and project managers at IPÊ to exchange knowledge and experience.
"These young people in the course are in a period of career transition. We're always looking for immersion opportunities with organisations that undertake environmental work, contact with experts in the field and of course, contact with nature itself. It's a way to show how it's put into practice in Brazil. IPÊ has the infrastructure that we look for", explains Flavia Bellaguarda, co-founder of Youth Climate Leaders and climate change advisor for ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability).
READ THE FULL IPE 2019 ANNUAL REPORT HERE.
