The creation of an ‘Algarve Literary Route’ is one of four Algarve projects to benefit from Portugal’s Orçamento Participativo (OP), a €5 million budget to bring citizen-led projects from around the country to life.
In the Algarve, the selected projects, among the 22 winners nationwide, also include the free distribution of bird nest boxes to boroughs and schools around the Algarve, the renovation of Faro’s Ermida de Santo António do Alto and the launch of an awareness campaign led by physiotherapists to teach schoolchildren correct postures to avoid back problems later in life.
The ‘Algarve Literary Route’ will cost around €120,000 to create and aims to “value the region’s heritage” by establishing links between “physical spaces and texts by Algarvian authors”.
In other words, it aims to take people on journeys to places that are referred to in books, poems and other literary works while also providing people with information about them in Portuguese, English and French. The route will be developed in the next two years.
The second project was suggested by Olhão’s wildlife centre RIAS in a bid to increase people’s “interest and contact” with birdlife, helping them see how important birds are to the “wellbeing of the Algarve’s urban ecosystems”.
Thus, the plan is to provide free bird nest boxes to boroughs and schools and carry out environmental awareness campaigns.
Some of the boxes will be equipped with cameras so that the footage can be shown live online. The project also has a two-year timeframe to be implemented and a €150,000 budget.
Around €70,000 will also be spent on a makeover at Faro’s Ermida de Santo António do Alto. The project is to rehabilitate and reopen the church, its lookout and the Antonino museum, making the whole area an “unmissable tourist attraction for those who visit Faro”.
Last but not least, around €150,000 will be ploughed into a project called ‘Costas Para o Futuro’ to teach schoolchildren correct posture in order to avoid back and spine issues in the future.
The four projects were among the 22 that were selected as this year’s winners. The OP received over 1,400 ideas from citizens, of which less than half (691) made the final voting.
The full list of winning projects can be found online at https://opp.gov.pt/winners
