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• Collection of good practices of catalan cooperation
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Good Practices 2

Economic and social development in the rural communities, afro-Ecuadorians and indigenous of the province of Succumb (Ecuador)

In this second number of the collection of good practices we want to present you an initiative that has developed in Ecuador and more specifically in Succumb, frontier province with Colombia and an area of high conflict. We reckon that this program is very interesting from diverse perspectives:

Because the indigenous and peasants communities of Succumb could, through the project, make real the access to the right of the ground recognized legally but with which very hardly they could gain access without an external technical support. Because could the peasants have improved the system of integral production of its farm that has helped the progress of the familiar income and to reinforce the autonomy of the women, who assume part of this diversified agricultural production.

Because the program has managed to generate mechanisms for the creation of local financial structures, above all with microsavings banks and credit, automanaged the most part by women, who have allowed to move the local economy from small productive initiatives.

Because it has made the schooling possible in the proper language of the children of five nationalities: Quítxua, Siona, Sequoia, Confán and Shuar, maintaining its community roots. In the same time, the edition of pedagogic materials in Siona, Sequoia, Confán allows to put the bases for the primary education, and fix the writing in the three minor languages. This is a pioneering task, of undeniable linguistic and cultural transcendence for the nationalities and for the whole country. Because it has helped to reinforce the organization of associations and rural federations of the afro-Ecuadorians communities, indigenous and cunning or half-caste.

In short, the main value that he emphasizes the program is, above all, the creation of instruments of empowering: regulation of the microsavings banks and credit, documents of recognition of the historical identity of the indigenous populations on its ancestral territory, models of production for diversified integral farms...

All these instruments increase not only the self-esteem but also the operative aptitudes to act, and they are a useful tool to brake the continued occupation and control of the grounds of the Amazonia by the big oil companies or big business men, who end up by buying the grounds of the small producers who turn out to be forced to sell them at low prices. This model might be applied also to other communities with coincidental problems, which is why we think that it is important to announce it.

Núria Camps i Vidal
Director of AVALUEM

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