ECUADOR – Strengthening the food security of indigenous women farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon
The project, carried out in collaboration with the local partner Fundación Atasim, ONGD (Organización No Gubernamental para el Desarrollo, Non-Governmental Organization for Development), is aimed at strengthening the food security of indigenous families in the Ecuadorian Amazon, developing sustainable family farming, strengthening the agricultural value chain and enhancing the role of women in the local market.
The initiative focuses in particular on the role of women as a key actor in socio-economic development in communities, fostering local agro-ecological entrepreneurship while preserving the set of knowledge, customs and values of indigenous culture. The agricultural development component is accompanied by a path of awareness and education on healthy eating curated by the volunteers of Doctors for Peace and aimed at pregnant women and children in the communities.
The context
Ecuador, according to the data of the “Global Hunger Index”, suffers from a moderate level of hunger, among the most serious in the South American area and particularly worrying because it is constant over time.
The area of intervention concerns the indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, located in the province of Morona – Santiago (Amazon region in the east of the country) – municipality of Morona and in the three indigenous communities of Zuñac, San Isidro and 9 de Octubre.
In these areas, about 70% of the population lives below the poverty line, and in the province of reference the main occupations concern the agricultural sector and related activities: in this area, 36.6% of men and 39.3% of women are employed.
Throughout the area, economic conditions are particularly difficult: it is estimated that most families survive on less than $200 a month; in the province of Morona, 54.8% of indigenous families live in conditions of extreme poverty (less than 47 dollars per month for each member of the household).
In 2020, this situation was aggravated by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which increased the economic and food vulnerability of families, highlighting how an extraordinary intervention was necessary to increase the resilience of the indigenous peoples of the area.
Indigenous women live in a condition of triple discrimination related to gender, poverty and ethnicity. The direct beneficiaries of the intervention are selected from within families in vulnerable conditions, following a general criterion of level of involvement in community life and interest in participating in concrete initiatives.
Activities
The specific objectives of the intervention are aimed at:
- Improve training and opportunities to launch initiatives
female agri-food entrepreneurs. - Increasing indigenous women’s access to the market and
commercialization. - Strengthening the role of women in decision-making, combating gender discrimination.
- Ensuring safe and quality food for indigenous families in the
target communities.
To achieve the objectives, the strategy adopted is based on an integrated multi-level approach, which allows the achievement of the objectives to be pursued
food self-sufficiency, acting simultaneously on:
- Transmission of good practices in the field of nutrition and healthy eating and
Balanced. - Knowledge and differentiation of nutrient intakes in the diet of
beneficiary communities. - Technical training on food production for self-consumption and marketing.
- Generation of alternative sources of income for families.
- Improvement of the market through the redevelopment of the agri-food value chain.
