Marumbi Watershed Bioregional Activation

As the world feverishly composts into something unknown, what should Children and Communities be learning?

This is the guiding question orienting our work.

Home - Serra do Mar Bioregion

The largest remaining continuum of Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, Serra do Mar holds extraordinary ecological scale, living memory, and watershed connectivity.

Hydrological and topological study of satellite images of the “Serra do Mar” Bioregion. Courtesy: @pedalhidrográfico

Hydrological and topological study of satellite images of the Marumbi Wathershed. Courtesy: @pedalhidrográfico

Marumbi River at headwaters

Weaving a Bioregional Learning Ecosystem

In this territory we are weaving an expanding network of distinct actors, planting the seeds of bioregional resilience.

Fostering practices in regenerative education, agroforestry, ecology research, and place-based technological experimentation, we explore how living ecosystems can meaningfully inform community organizing, identity, cultural imagination, hope, and materiality.

In the past four years our work has spanned across:

• Community Associations: Deep ties with local residents and grassroots organizations across the territory.
• Public & Private Partners: Collaborations with local government and private actors amplifying impact.
• University Collaborations: Academic partnerships grounding practice in research and shared knowledge.
• Local Food Cooperative: A community-owned food system reinforcing territorial resilience and sovereignty.

Examples

Terra Escola: A Living Community School

🌿 Accredited PreSchool (4-6 yrs old)

Community-based early childhood education located at a community association, with expansion into primary education underway.

🤝 Community-Woven Curriculum

The wider territory community is woven into curricular and extra-curricular activities, strengthening local resilience. Fostering partnerships with municipality and public schools.

🌊 The River as Teacher

The Marumbi River is recognized as a living being whose vitality organizes all conditions for life in the region.

The Marumbi River Avatar

The Marumbi River Avatar is a pioneering initiative to transform how the locals communities of Morretes relate to the watershed. In a region facing intensifying climate pressures—floods, landslides, and droughts—children often experience a growing "sensory distance" from their territory. The Avatar project, building upon previous Avatar instances in the region and overseeas, addresses this by creating an expression medium for the Marumbi River: a living entity co-created with the watershed children, dialogue interfaces powered by opensource AI, artisitic embodiments in the form of sculptures and real-time data from environmental sensors.

Rather than treating the river as a passive resource, the Avatar invites the community to "listen" to it. By integrating environmental education, art, and critical technology, we foster a deep, affective bond between the next generation and their ecosystem. Since launching in March 2026, the project has successfully completed its first phase, proving that this unique blend of Waldorf-inspired pedagogy and emerging technology resonates deeply with the community.

AMAMTANAL Neighbors Association

Founded in 2000, AMAMTANAL is a grassroots association representing six rural neighborhoods in the Marumbi Watershed (América de Baixo, América de Cima, Marumbi, Fartura, Pantanal & Cruz Alta). Since the pandemic, the association has been struggling to recover the vitality of its golden times. But together, we have been able to start reppaterning it into a living learning hub. In 2025 and 2026 we partnered with AMAMTANAL to organize the “Terra Educa project” - a 12-month regenerative education journey centered in community mobilization.

As such, we transformed the association’s headquarters from a quiet meeting space into an active learning ecosystem: 56+ activities and workshops reaching 1,900+ participations across families, children, and adults. The space became the physical anchor for our broader network, where weekly "open door" days reconnected residents who had been drifting apart during crisis years.

From bioconstruction and water treatment workshops to agroforestry and hands-on activities, AMAMTANAL regenerated itself as a community hub, providing the infrastructure that now supports Terra Escola.

The Current Dream

"Marumbi SymbioHub" Bioregional Learning Center

Rather than scaling through expansion, we are actively cultivate a watershed-scale prototypes that can be fractally adapted to other headwater territories in the larger Bioregion.

Our current dream is to evolve into the Marumbi SymbioHub — a Bioregional Learning Center consolidating what is already emergent. By providing novel and ancient reconnection opportunities for people of all age-groups, but most importantly by serving as a new building for Terra Escola as it grows its learning offers for children and youth.

As such, we hope to inspire the larger Serra do Mar Bioregion towards a living blueprint for repatterning how we live.