PROJECT · 2017–2018
Strengthening local economic development across western Paraná
A regional training and co-financing programme for western Paraná.
Overview
ConectaDEL-Brasil was a regional Local Economic Development (DEL) training programme, created in 2013 by Itaipu Parquetec with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as part of a wider Latin American effort that also ran in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru. It supported the decentralisation of western Paraná through dialogue spaces, training, knowledge management and the co-financing of local projects. After the IDB's involvement ended, Itaipu Parquetec, with the support of Itaipu Binacional, carried the programme forward; and in 2018 a partnership with Fundação Araucária launched its innovation phase, ConectaDEL Inovação. Across the programme, since 2014, more than 460 local actors have been trained and over R$ 1 million invested in co-financed projects.
The problem
Local actors and municipalities often lacked the capacity to diagnose, design, finance and manage their own development projects, and public-private coordination across the territory was weak.
What I did
As a Territorial Development fellow (2017–2018), I helped run the programme in Western Paraná: training local actors in public-private partnerships, project planning, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation; analysing funding proposals; and supporting the selection and co-financing of local projects. In 2018, through an agreement with Fundação Araucária, I contributed to drafting the innovation co-financing call with the Regional Innovation System (ConectaDEL Inovação), connecting the region's universities and businesses. I also systematised the experiences and pedagogical learnings of the 2017 cohort, which I supported from design to co-financing:
- Structuring of a fruit-processing production arrangement in Umuarama
- Training in freshwater prawn farming
- Development of a replicable rural tourism methodology
- Implementation of an animal health system for smallholder producers
- Implementation of technology innovation centres