Help Amazonians Turn Bananas into Jobs

Thanks to your support, the NUGKUI enterprise in the Peruvian Amazon is already making progress turning discarded bananas into income. Abias, a young member of the Chapi community, is one of the youth trained through this project and now leads a production team. Together, they collect discarded bananas, wash and slice them, load them into a dehydrator, monitor them for up to six hours until the moisture drops to 6%, and vacuum-seal the finished flakes for sale. So far, 4 youth have been trained in processing, 11 are helping lead the enterprise, and 18 jobs have been created, nearly half held by women.

At the same time, the team has established a dedicated space for processing, with equipment that allows them to handle larger volumes of bananas. This has made it possible for 200 farming families to begin selling bananas that previously had no market value, and the enterprise has already secured a buyer requesting 1,000 kg of flakes per month, showing clear demand for the product.

These are important first steps, but the project is not yet at the scale needed to meet that demand. More young people still need to be trained, and additional equipment is required to expand production capacity. With continued support, more youth can step into roles like Abias’s and more families can begin earning income from what was once discarded.

Thank you for helping make this progress possible.