PESPC Santa Marta

Description: Tranforming cooking oil into cleaning products

Names: Silvio Cabral e Joana Almeida

Favela: Santa Marta

Silvio Cabral Junior and Joana Almeida are partners in PESPC – Project of Social Education for Conscious Thought, an initiative created during the pandemic to offer community residents an alternative for generating income during a period marked by unemployment and social isolation.Alongside his wife Joana and the other partners on the team, Silvio has been leading a new phase of PESPC.

Today, the organization works to strengthen the project as a social impact business, generating income for its participants while promoting sustainability through the collection of used cooking oil and PET bottles, which are transformed into cleaning products.

In addition to working at PESPC, Silvio has worked for 17 years in the construction materials sector and is studying Physical Education at Veiga de Almeida University (UVA), balancing different challenges with the purpose of building an even more solid future for his family and his community.

“We joined the Hub Project because we know the potential of this initiative. My wife, Joana, and our partner Paulo already participated in the fourth cohort of the Hub Project, and we saw the positive impact it brought to the project. Now, in this new phase of PESPC, we have returned to acquire new knowledge, better structure the business, and prepare it to grow sustainably.”

With purpose, social commitment, and a vision for the future, Silvio and Joana show that entrepreneurship is also about transforming challenges into opportunities, generating an impact for the community and the environment.