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With the purpose of escalating efforts to help the work developed by the Nós Podemos Paraná (“We are capable, Paraná”) Movement based on every municipality’s true scenario, in 2008 ORBIS – Sustainability Indicators Regional Base Observatory started implementing the first Local Observation Centers. In this first stage, seven municipalities will be charged with monitoring and disseminating local indicators.

The chief advantage of the Observatories Network is sharing reliable information and successful experiences to increase knowledge about the city and to add more quality to participatory and decision-making processes”, says Luciana Brenner, ORBIS’s executive coordinator.

This decentralization will allow for more extensive knowledge about the local reality, a critical issue for a sustainability indicator system that is in sync with Paraná’s potential and needs. Professor Ladislaw Dowbor, from the University of São Paulo (USP), follows the same reasoning. “In addition to global indicators, each city and region must define their own [indicators], geared to local quality of life. The main concern is having indicators based on clear and measurable objectives to be used as guidelines for decision-making processes, which can also be used for measuring development within this broader perspective”, he says.

“The indicators may advance the work carried out by each regional center, particularly in developing social accountability and decision-making projects. Knowledge of local reality makes it easier to develop projects with a view to reaching the Millennium Objectives”, explains Maria Aparecida Zago, coordinator of the “Nós Podemos Paraná” project.

One of ORBIS’s chief tasks is monitoring and advertising the Millennium Development Objectives (MDOs) Indicators in Paraná. According to Luciana Brenner, ORBIS’s executive coordinator, analyzing indicators from all of Paraná’s municipalities provided support and guided actions and projects designed to reach the goals set by the MDO, which are also part of the Nós Podemos, Paraná Movement.  

In two years, the Movement involved more than 10 thousand people, in approximately 200 cities across the state. Today, there are 19 Regional Centers, in all micro-regions, working in projects and actions targeting local sustainable development. “We want to show that indicators are not just numbers, but rather, that they reflect the reality of a particular area. They can, and should be used for decision making and formulation of public policies”, says Luciana.

History – ORBIS is a program developed by the IPD – Development Promotion Institute, supported by Fiep and Sesi – Industrial Social Service. It started working with indicators started in 2004, when the Observatory began to map millennium goal indicators in the Curitiba Metropolitan Area, including poverty, literacy, infant mortality, maternal mortality rates, incidence of Aids and others.

In 2005, this mapping activity was expanded to include the rest of the state, and its purpose was to point out the most destitute or critical areas deserving immediate public intervention. “What is most important is for people to have access to information; user friendly information, capable of contributing to greater awareness of the reality around us”, emphasizes ORBIS’s executive coordinator.