Guarana is cultivated and traditionally processed as part of the village trade and has become an essential source of income for many indigenous people and small farmers in Brazil. This grassroots organization of agricultural communities works in the Bahia coastal forest belt, which consists of 70% secondary forest and 30% primary forest.

ONCA is a dynamic and integrated project that leads to increasingly complex development structures via concrete processes of consciousness - a never-ending process of change.

The members grow the climbing plant guarana. ONCA tries to remedy the social inequalities and advocates better living and working conditions for the participants in the long term. Around forty families have joined the project, with each of the smallholder families having an average of eight members. ONCA was founded in 1990 and is run by one of the farmers.

The heart of the project is the school, in which around 100 pupils (children, adolescents, adults) are taught in morning, afternoon and evening courses according to reform-pedagogical methods. At the same time, it serves as a training facility for future farm workers who will later carry on and develop the project idea. It is a hopeful ray of hope to see how young people in particular get involved and work on the change processes.