Building a SUSTAINABle future

We at Project Vita understand the importance of implementing solutions that have a long-term impact. Therefore, our focus is on helping communities achieve sustainable development by understanding its members behaviours, needs, culture and attitudes. Furthermore, how it can differ between individuals. Only by knowing this, one can implement solutions that people feel motivated to use and adapt to one’s needs.

There are three pillars for sustainability: Society, Economy, and the Environment. As we focus on the people in our communities, we take a special interest in social sustainability and development - inspiring people to adopt sustainable lifestyles and small behavioural changes that still make a big impact. Because it's when we understand the residents of a community that we can achieve environmental and economic sustainability. A perfect example of this is our recycling initiative, where we install convenient recycling centres near residents' homes and educate them on the environmental benefits of managing waste properly and not having to hide it on their own land.

We can make the biggest difference by creating simple solutions that are easy to implement and bring tangible benefits to the communities in which we operate. Everyone can see the health and environmental impacts of unsustainable practices. By helping people to adopt sustainable behaviours, we can create a positive change that becomes a habit for future generations.

By getting to know individuals, Behavioral Design tools can be used to ensure that solutions at the municipal level have a high probability of being adopted by the population. All so that the solutions chosen meet people's behaviors and desires. Especially in the communities where we work where people live in poverty, we will never achieve sustainable development if we do not take into account the conditions of its inhabitants. Everyone should benefit from a sustainable future for it to be long-term!

 
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The Challenges We Face

Social

Even the best solutions will fail if you cannot get people to change. That's why you need to understand people's habits and behaviors and find a way to motivate them to make better choices. No one likes to be lectured or nagged, and it's ineffective in the long run. So instead, we invite local leaders and community members to work with us to help design real solutions that can be easily implemented and reproduced in other communities. You cannot create lasting change by diktat, but you can affect change by working together.

Economic

For people living in poverty, environmental concerns often fall by the wayside. When you are worried about where your next meal will come from, you aren't concerned about the long-term consequences of improper waste disposal. Once we can meet people's basic needs - safe and stable housing, nutritious food, clean drinking water, and medical care - they can focus on building better communities for themselves and their families.

Environmental

Climate change and environmentally-destructive practices have an outsize impact on many of the world's most vulnerable people, leaving many to suffer the consequences of problems they didn't cause. Crop-destroying floods are becoming more common as our climate changes. Fishermen cannot feed their families because Chinese trawlers illegally deplete fisheries without consequence. We must address the pressing issues wreaking havoc in communities across Mozambique and Africa.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly released a list of seventeen goals for sustainable development, intending to implement these recommendations by 2030. While we would love to see all of these worthwhile objectives come to fruition, we chose three SDGs as the focus of our efforts: SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being; SDG 4, Quality Education; and SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities. And while we still have a long way to go, we are making real and sustained progress toward realizing these aims.

Our health is the most precious gift we have. We take things like clean water, physicians, medicines, and hospitals for granted. Yet, these essential building blocks to healthy living are missing for many in the developing world. For example, the lack of primary care and early interventions in Mozambique leads to major illness and death, often from easily treatable infections and diseases. Project Vita is working with companies, private donors, and the Mozambican government to address these challenges. In the past three years, we:

  • Built a maternity clinic in a rural village, including providing renewable energy to the facility and training the lay midwives at the clinic.

  • Signed a memorandum of understanding with the regional health department of Inhambane Province to improve rural healthcare access.

  • Built a playground in Beira, improving the quality of life for the local children and encouraging fitness at a young age.

Having an education is the most significant determining factor in a person's ability to lift themselves out of poverty. Yet, many of the locals we work with in Mozambique lament their lack of education and express their desire to provide their children with the schooling they need to succeed. To help break the cycle of generational poverty, Project Vita is committed to improving children's education in rural areas. Some of our recent projects include:

  • Installing toilets for a school with over 200 pupils and teaching the children about proper hygiene and its role in minimizing the spread of disease.

  • Working with local communities to rebuild classrooms destroyed by cyclones.

  • As part of our commitment to community involvement, Project Vita hires unskilled local workers and teaches them vital construction skills, increasing their odds of finding and maintaining gainful employment.

Project Vita mainly targets development projects in rural Mozambique, areas often ignored by the government and international aid organizations. Therefore, we focus on helping these communities, teaching them how to improve their lives and help build a better future for their children. As part of this effort, we:

  • Build essential community facilities such as health clinics and schools. Unfortunately, many schools are too far away from the villages, and many children must drop out at a young age to help their families.

  • Construct houses in rural areas using local, affordable materials, and provide free blueprints to anyone that wants them. We teach construction skills to men in rural areas, helping them build their communities and develop the skills they need to earn a living.

  • Partner with municipal and tribal leaders to develop innovative solutions to overcome the challenges of rural living.