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Patricia Bustamante's environmental education program for rural Brazil brings the elderly and children together to catalogue plants, rediscover their traditional uses and create community-based nurseries and seed banks.

Ronaldo Lima de Oliveira is working both to prevent the destruction of the rain forest and to guarantee the survival of forest communities by creating a model for sustainable agro-economical activities in Brazil's recently-created "extractive reserves." The strategies that he is developing will...

Tourism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it brings people and business to economically starved regions, creating jobs and wealth. On the other, much of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of business owners and comes at the expense of severe environmental and cultural degradation. Rui...

Raquel Barros' new approach is rehabilitating young, low-income, chemically dependent mothers, an underserved population in Brazil. By allowing mothers to keep their children with them during treatment, Raquel is changing the model of drug rehabilitation into a more effective treatment which...

Rubens Gomes is working to slow the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon while teaching rural and urban community members how to use the resources in a mutually beneficial and sustainable way. Rubens's program develops lines of alternative certified wood products–from musical instruments to...

Merlong is helping small farmers in the state of Piaui overcome historically defeatist attitudes to become more productive. Through CERMO, a non-profit educational and consulting organization he co-founded, he hopes to help the region's small farmers become more productive and combine to achieve...

Terri Valle de Aquino grew up in Acre, the very poor and thinly populated state on the southwestern edge of Brazil's Amazon basin. He returned to work with the indigenous peoples there and is now setting out to help them and their traditional enemies, the rubber tappers, learn to collaborate and...

Tiberio Alloggio is turning community-based ecotourism–an ideal medium for the preservation of indigenous culture and the conservation natural resources–into an effective economic solution for the river populations of the Amazon region.

Wigold Schäffer is developing, demonstrating and testing a new model for the operation of small farms that reconciles the preservation of secondary forests and attendant biodiversity with farmers' desires for higher incomes and improved quality of life. Combining native species reforestation, the...