Comercialization of rural youth in Valle de Cauca

Countries:

Colombia

Start project:

2017

Donors:

Kerk in Actie

In Colombia, disadvantaged youth from socially problematic neighborhoods will be trained as qualified cooks to promote healthy, traditional and local cuisine. By doing so, the demand for organic and local food will increase and small farmers in the area will receive more money/fair prices for their products. As the result, disadvantaged youth will have the opportunity to find jobs as qualified cooks or work as entrepreneurs. As well, local consumers will have access to affordable/healthy food.

Background

The project contributes to the livelihoods improvement of disadvantaged, displaced and demobilized young people and smallholder farmers in the growing agro-food and hospitality market in Colombia. This proposal is centered at generating economic opportunities:

- For disadvantaged youth: job allocation as a way to stimulate their livelihoods, by offering grant technical cooking formation (work oriented skills, knowledge and technical capacity) through the already proved MANQ'A schools program (actually implemented in Bolivia in 12 schools and Colombia in 2 schools).
- For the small-scale rural producers: by reaching commercial opportunities of their locally sustainable production (stimulate local economy) through the MANQ'A cooking schools own demand of products and by increasing the demand from an already stablished network with restaurants and other food business in Bogota.

As well, the project impact local consumers that will have access to affordable and healthy food produced by the MANQ'A cooks during their formation process. The program seeks innovative ways of providing and promoting healthy food to local consumers for example in local gastronomic markets and fairs.

One of the most innovative elements in the project relates to the mechanisms that ICCO has created to ensure the financial sustainability of the intervention. To do so, MANQ'A creates profitable business models (Catering services, restaurants, food products, etc) that generate its own revenues for the project.