Green My Favela (GMF)

Created not-for-profit land use restoration and organic urban food security project in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Reclaimed land to build urban gardens at various scales, including organic food gardens, children’s gardens, vertical gardens, eco-parks, food forests, and orchards, with budgets up to $250,000. GMF has worked in collaboration with individuals, families, NGOs, schools, the private and public sector to establish more productive, environmentally resilient, and desirable social space. GMF’s Rocinha+Verde project received a UNDP grant and was the first community garden created in the Rocinha favela of Rio, one of the largest urban favelas in Brazil. GMF consults for state and municipal government secretaries on a range of urban restoration projects and has had a long-term relationship with Rio’s Municipal Secretary for the Environment’s Hortas Cariocas program, most notably in its collaboration to aid in co-producing the largest organic urban food garden in Latin America. GMF’s work has been showcased at the United Nations Rio+20 Summit for Sustainable Development and by the InterAmerican Development Bank. In 2017, GMF handed over the international volunteer arm of the project to Community in Action. GMF continues to support the efforts of Hortas Cariocas and GMF gardeners living in the favelas and continues to work in food security research that interlaces with issues relating to resilience, informality, circularity, and land use restoration.