The current objective of the Odebrecht Foundation is to help train youth as responsible, conscious productive, participative and united citizens.

Created in 1965 by Norberto Odebrecht, the institution originally offered employees benefits not covered by the Pension Fund. Over the following years, the organization’s different companies assumed these responsibilities, prompting the Odebrecht foundation to direct its actions at issues of public interest.

Starting in 1988, the foundation began to concentrate on youth education. The institution currently supports families from the low-income community Baixo Sul in Bahia in partnership with the United Nations Organization and the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), among others.

In this same region, the foundation also develops the Integrated and Sustainable Development Model of the Pratigi Environmental Protection Area (EPA). The challenge of the program is to elaborate a model of sustainable development for the APAs within a governance system that can be reapplied in other contexts.

The actions are focused on the existence of four capitals in communities of any socioeconomic profile:

• Human Capital, formed by the people who live there;
• Social Capital, formed by the relations between people and through collective knowledge;
• Environmental Capital, offered by nature;
• Productive Capital, combination of these forces for a transformation that generates wealth and becomes a factor in the survival, growth and perpetuation of the group.

Odebrecht employees can invest in the foundation’s initiatives through the Tribute to the Future program. The incentive behind this is Law 8069/90, which allows taxpayers to direct up to 6% of their income tax to social projects, without paying any additional amount.