Beatriz Malachias and Veronica Park, BBA students at FGV EAESP, Brazil, dive deep into reasons why social projects fail and put the spotlight on Instituto Votorantim whose strategy and approach managed to turn around a moribund initiative to improve workers’ conditions and modernize the traditional cashew nut industry.

Beatriz Malachias and Veronica Park are FGV EAESP School of Management  Runners Up in the CoBS 2026 Case Development Challenge, part of the Advanced International Certificate in Responsible Business Practices. With kind acknowledgements to Cloves Carvalho, former Executive Director of Instituto Votorantim.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein.

In social investment, this tension is ever-present. What tends to be prioritized is whatever is easiest to measure: tangible deliverables, numbers that are simple to communicate, short-term material benefits. Yet the dimensions that deeply transform realities, which are autonomy, self-esteem and a genuine sense of capability, are harder to capture and, for that reason, too often overlooked. When results and impact are treated as the same thing, the difference gets lost. The case that follows invites us to tell them apart.

A Subsistence Economy

For decades, the small village of Carrilho, located in Itabaiana, Sergipe, in the Brazilian Northeast, lived off the shelling of cashew nuts, a traditional activity, but carried out under degrading conditions. The work was done under intense heat, in direct contact with smoke, fire, and the acidic liquid of the cashew nut, which damaged their fingerprints permanently. Most profits went to intermediaries, and children worked alongside adults, sacrificing education for a cycle of labor that offers no path forward.

It was a survival economy for these families, anchored in a real local vocation, yet maintained at standards incompatible with dignity, safety, and stable income.

When the Infrastructure is Insufficient

In the early 2000s, public investment was channeled into building a small cashew nut processing facility. The intention was legitimate: to improve working conditions and modernize a traditional activity. The outcome, however, fell short. Walls went up, a roof was laid, but the real foundations for operation were never established. There was a lack of machinery, management, productive structure, and commercial organization. In other words, the construction stood; the business never came to life.

This is where many social projects end. The physical structure generates symbolic and reputational returns for its funders, while changing little for those it was designed to serve. A tangible asset was delivered. The impact was not.

From Delivery to Capacity Building

Only in 2013 did the village receive a response that matched the seriousness of its situation. In partnership with Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), Instituto Votorantim, the social arm of one of Brazil’s largest conglomerates, relaunched the initiative under a more complete model. While the bank provided the financial resources, the Institute, in line with its focus on education and long-term development, took on the most structural part of the project.

This logic defined the design of the initiative. Instead of being limited to the delivery of infrastructure, the project was conceived to develop local capabilities and create stronger foundations for autonomy. To achieve this, the Institute worked together with a team of consultants specialized in this field, jointly building the proposal and structuring the investment plan. Over more than four years, the consultants maintained continuous engagement with the village, with regular field presence and practical support at every stage. The project only moved forward when members demonstrated a solid grasp of each practice.

The focus was management education in the fullest sense: organization, logistics, production, sales, and financial routines. Yet the deeper goal was not to teach people how to produce, something the group already knew, but to shift how they saw themselves, from workers carrying out tasks to owners fully responsible for the sustainability of their own business. It reflected a principle that is simple but rarely honored in social policy: systemic change demands time, patience, and resilience.

How the Transformation Takes Place

The change went far beyond the production floor. By mechanizing the hardest physical tasks and containing the heat and smoke that workers had long been exposed to, the project brought working conditions to a standard that had never been reached before. Its greatest accomplishment, however, was modernizing without losing what made the product special: the traditional processing steps were kept intact, protecting both the flavor and a craft built over fifty years.

Behind the scenes, two other building blocks proved equally important: formalizing the cooperative’s legal standing and building a commercial operation. Together, these allowed them to sell directly to markets, capture more value, and operate free from middlemen, because without market access, independence would have remained out of reach.

A decisive lever of the project was the formation of an internal leadership within the cashew nut cooperative that mobilizes the group and leads day-to-day operations. Her trajectory, having worked in cashew production since the age of seven, legitimizes this leadership and gives the cooperative its identity and credibility.

The results, both social and financial, were striking. Income rose, reliance on aid fell, and child labour ended. Instead of working in cashew processing, the children were able to dedicate their time to their studies, bringing a more favourable outlook for a different future for the next generation.

Impact Beyond Numbers

The most relevant impact, however, is less tangible. The cashew produced in Carrilho stopped being just a means of survival and became a source of identity and pride, recognized, in fact, as an intangible cultural heritage of Sergipe. Yet the heart of the story is not the income generated. It is the autonomy that was built.

As Cloves Carvalho, then Executive Director of Instituto Votorantim, noted, “Material benefit is an outcome. Impact is when an activity once associated with hardship comes to represent identity, recognition, and value for society. Money matters, and deeply. But it is only the beginning.” In a nutshell, true impact is what endures after the funding is gone.

The Secret to Lasting Change

This project was more than a social transformation; it was a systemic shift that continues to unfold. Meaningful change does not come from handing something over but from building something up by development of skills, leadership, and organizational capacity that sustain the process and make autonomy real. Indeed, Carrilho shows that when those elements come together with patient investment, hands-on guidance, and genuine trust in local leadership, it makes the results outlast the project itself.

Notably, the cooperative is still operating today. That fact, more than any metric, captures what lasting impact in the cashew nut industry looks like. It is not measured in deliverables or disbursements, but in the ability of a community to stand on its own feet, steer its own course, and carry its own future forward, long after the original supporters have stepped away.

Therefore, Carrilho is a reminder that true social change demands more time, more presence, and more attention to people than most funders are willing to commit to. Physical assets may open the door, but they will never be enough to keep it open.

Note on Sources

This article is based on primary interviews, internal project documentation, and field case materials related to Instituto Votorantim’s productive inclusion programme in partnership with BNDES, including video reporting by Globo Rural on the cashew-processing communities of northeastern Brazil. View the references used in this article here.

AI Disclosure: Generative AI was used in the preparation of this article for some linguistic refinement, grammatical correction, and stylistic polishing. However, all core ideas, original arguments, and the specific analysis of this case “Impact Begins After the Construction: How Development, Management, and Leadership Sustain Social Transformation” were developed and authored exclusively by the students.

Multimedia: To learn more about the Carril community and see the cashew processing facility in action, watch our short documentary here.

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