Raiz Minhota Cooperativa Integral (RM) is a Portuguese multisectoral cooperative located in the Minho region in Portugal. Raiz Minhota is a young organization with a mission to make a change in its local community through local community action and participatory management and decision-making. Raiz Minhota’s activities focus on the promotion of innovation and cooperative regenerative entrepreneurship, regenerative and integral development of the rural space, facilitating the agro-ecological and energy transition, and the sustainable use of natural resources. It organizes community events, trainings, and conferences that promote cooperation, cohesion and social inclusion, participatory governance, group work skills, and the co-creation of answers to territorial challenges and potentials. It provides counseling and practical help for cooperative members and the local community in their sustainable transition and collects best practices. Raiz Minhota has management, event organizing, and ecological and participatory nonformal education capacities.
Project Role
Raiz Minhota will be responsible for local research, identifying local environmental issues, organizing local eco-placemaking workshops and activities as well as outreach, local mobilization, and dissemination of results.
Project Activities
In Portugal, project activities will take place in two areas designated by the two partner organizations. Raiz Minhota Cooperativa’s project events will focus on the Alto Minho region, which is a Portuguese sub-region located in the northwest, belonging to the North region. It is bordered to the south by the District of Braga, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the north and east by Spain. Classified as a rural area, it comprises of ten municipalities and 208 parishes with a total extension of 2,219 km2, 231,293 inhabitants in 2021, and a population density of 104 inhabitants per km2. Alto Minho is in the set of European NUTS III with greater environmental sensitivity to climate change. Forest fires, coastal erosion, cold waves, and floods are some of the risks associated with the region's environmental problems. In Alto Minho, municipalities have been mobilizing to invest in surveillance systems, risk assessment, prevention, and response to the phenomenon of climate change. However, and observing the main risks, the programming of local actions should consider the establishment of participatory models based on access to public information about the different risks, monitoring at the territorial level, as well as empowering communities to intervene in their territory, mostly of forest occupation.