Projects

The target group are girls and young women up to the age of 17, whose labor force participation is around 95%. They work in agriculture and livestock farming for small-scale trade, subsistence and self-consumption, their work is unpaid and their living conditions are completely dependent. Girls under the age of 14 are very often responsible for looking after their younger siblings. As a result, almost 90% of girls only reach the third year of primary school. Currently 97% do not have the opportunity to learn to read and write. A circumstance that excludes them from the general economic and labor market. Additionally, the number of teenage pregnancies is high, with an average age of 15 years. Being married with a child severely limits their chances of accessing secondary education.

This project represents the second phase of our intervention that began this year 2023 with the project “Empowerment of women of the indigenous community “Q’ero Nation” through training as classifiers of alpaca wool”, also funded by the Schmitz Foundations . Initially there were 20 women who were trained to classify alpaca fibers, after the end of the project there will be 50 trained women from different communities.

The project is the second part of an overall measure that aims to set up an educational center for the collection, sale and shipping of alpaca wool in the municipality of Lucre. Subproject 2 includes the shell of the education center and impacts the families of alpaca breeders in all 5 communities of the Qero nation (approx. 3,000 people). The shell construction measures in accordance with the Peruvian building specifications take protection against earthquakes into account and include the excavation of earth, the foundation, the supporting structure and the roof, but no masonry.

The concept of democracy in the western world has not managed to overcome the marginalization, exclusion and ignorance of the processes that indigenous peoples have mastered in their societies, but rather has strengthened the privileges of other sectors, creating a huge gap between two worlds that coexist in the same field.

Discrimination against women continues from generation to generation.
In order to improve the economic situation of alpaca breeders and at the same time to improve the position of women in society, 20 women were trained as classifiers as part of a project in 2022. By classifying an alpaca’s wool, a higher selling price can be achieved for the higher quality part, while the lower quality part is used for your own use.
Despite the qualifications they have achieved, the classifiers are not accepted by the intermediaries. The reason for this is that the women act as individuals and cannot operate as a registered organization.

The main goal of this project proposal is to build a greenhouse that uses only solar energy without resorting to other energy sources for heating or lighting, for example. Various types of vegetables are grown in this greenhouse in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner.