Empowering farmers in rural Colombia

On November 2011, the rainy season hit Colombia with all its strength; it affected its inhabitants all over the country, specially the farmers. Chocó was not the exception; the heavy rain made all the rivers levels grow, the Atrato River flooded the fields where the beneficiaries from Puerto Conto, Vigía del Fuerte and Bojayá had grown the native species.

During the first days of the floods they were concerned because things that were very bad shape, nevertheless day after day they kept visiting the greenhouses and helped to rebuild them. Those were tough days for the beneficiaries and their families, however they stood together with great optimism. They lost a lot, but didn´t lose everything, among the crops the water didn't touch, their spirits remained intact.

We want to share with you a video, where Gilberto Moreno, the responsible for the greenhouses maintenance, shows us the damaged caused by the floods:

Here we are in Puerto Conto, Bojayá, at the greenhouse we built and where we planted the seeds for our forest parcels. Here we have planted species like borojó, jagua, mil pesos, cedro, etc, this is murrapo, and this is borojó. As you can see, during the rainy season the river reached very high levels, it’s been a long time since the last time it happened, the water swept through most of what we had sown. Gilberto Moreno, responsible for the maintenance is going to explain us the damages: My name is Gilberto Moreno, i´m the person in charge here. The rainy season affected us, it caused great damage, the river reached almost two meters high, and we still have mud and garbage dragged by the current.  Every day I came to clean and fixed the broken pots, everybody did the same; no matter how many species were lost, thanks to the effort we could save a lot of them.

Links:

• Damage caused by the floods

The achievements of beneficiary families in Puerto Conto, Vigía del fuerte and Bojayá have managed to spark interest in other communities in Medio Atrato, who are helping us to restore spoiled areas of forest.

10 families from the La Isla de los Palacios community stepped up to the challenge, setting up plots in Opogadó River where they will work for chance of a better income and to reduce pressure on the region’s rainforest and ecosystems.

They began their work full of enthusiasm and with high expectations.  Each family is now familiar with the land that they will be working on, has corn seed and the necessary means to start sowing it. They were also very attentive to the guidance provided by the technical team; so everything is set!

It’s rewarding to see the snowball effect that this initiative is having: if more and more people join the project, more hectares of forest in the Chocó Bioregion will be restored through the efforts of its own inhabitants.