On April 15, 2016, a tornado marked a before and after of life in the city of Dolores. After removing the rubble and raising the city again, the word resilience became everyday use for Doloreños. “We had to reinvent ourselves, but our idea of the Dolores brand is that we can disassociate it from the tornado and speak of courage and solidarity”highlighted in dialogue with Coffee & Business the project coordinator of the Municipality of Dolores, Maylen Laborda.
With the participation of the National Development Agency (ANDE), the European Union, the Congress of Mayors, the Municipality and the Mayor’s Office of Dolores promote two products: Brand Pains and Sorrows 2030. ANDE has already backed them with $2 million, in addition, another amount is donated by the Departmental Administration and the Municipality of Dolores. “It is a project of public and private participation”, highlighted Laborda.
The overall goal is promote the agricultural production chainpromoting the strategic differentiation of the city of Dolores.
“Uruguay produces food for 28 million people in the world, Dolores is the heart of this production, today we want to reposition ourselves and rethink ourselves towards the development models that the world demands, where innovation, quality and sustainability are the key factors” , remarked the mayor of Dolores, Joaquín Gómez.
Currently already there are more than 30 local companies associated with the project that collaborate with the conformation of the brand, contribute economically, and in turn, expect to earn a profit from this differentiation in the future.
In this sense, the head of the Municipality remarked that it is betting, for example, that the Dolores brand that is seen in the flour of Molino de Dolores will give it category and be a differential for the product.
According to the sources consulted, the launch of the brand will be between June and July of this year.
a city of the future
“The Paysandú that we want” or “Montevideo of tomorrow” are some of the experiences that the consulting firm 3vectores designed around the request of the respective departmental governments to outline their policies for the future. Now, the firm was contracted by the Municipality of Soriano and the municipality of Dolores to develop its brand.
As explained by the director of 3vectores, Giselle Della Mea, to Café & Negocios under the slogan “let’s design the city we want” it is committed to inspiring citizens to build more sustainable modelsyes “Transform our city from the breadbasket of the country to the hotbed of innovation”. For this, other cities that have also been “reconfigured” are taken as an example, as is the case of Bilbao in Spain, a purely industrial city that, after an economic crisis, was rethought with a strong cultural imprint.
“In Dolores we see a resurgence of work, more people who work remotely and stay in the city, it is important to attract that talent and make it the seed capital of a restructuring,” Della Mea emphasized.
Through the methodology Citizen Design Thinking The consultant proposes to visualize the city that residents dream of and, through different lines of work, develop a roadmap for the short, medium and long term.
the workshops
Between the municipality, the consulting company and the mayor’s office, six workshops were formed that trace the path to follow in the project. Civil society is expected to commit and give its opinion in relation to the different lines of work such as: technology, infrastructure or environmental sustainability. The workshops will take place between March 3 and May 5. For more information or registration you can access www.marcadolores.org
