English — Rede Favela Sustentável

The Sustainable Favela Network (SFN) is a grassroots network to recognize, strengthen, and multiply sustainable initiatives across Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, ultimately realizing the potential of favelas as part of a sustainable urban future

The Sustainable Favela Network is a network made up of 700 members, community mobilizers from more than 300 favelas and technical allies. We work integrated in the battle for climate justice by realizing the potential of favelas as models of sustainable communities

We seek to promote existing qualities in Rio de Janeiro's favelas in order to boost, realize and amplify their potential. The Sustainable Favela Network operates based on the perspective of favelas as sources of solutions, including for human sustainability, based on the concept of Asset-Based Community Development, which focuses on the development of residents and the territory according to their strengths, and not from an external vision and imposition.

Since 2022, the SFN is organized according to 11 propositive thematic objectives: climate justice, socio-environmental education, participatory policy-making, local culture and memory, food sovereignty, collective health, solidarity economy, right to sanitation, energy justice, just transport and sustainable housing. All of our actions are connected by these cross-cutting themes.

The Sustainable Favela Network launched an updated map in early 2022, making easily searchable 120 favela initiatives, located in 183 favelas across Greater Rio.

The user can, for example, conduct a precise search for SFN projects led by women, using a 100% volunteer team and focused on a specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) or on a specific SFN objective, or projects that were active during the pandemic. The map was realized in technical partnership with Professor Guillermo Douglass-Jaimes of Pomona College.

Explore the Sustainable Favela Network Map