Proyecto Yungas empowers Quechua women coffee farmers and their families in the Lacco Valley through agroecological initiatives, access to specialty markets, and community leadership programs. Integrated work in health, food security, and agricultural training helps families build livelihoods that are both financially and environmentally sustainable. We currently serve 9 communities in the Lacco Valley and hope to expand to more coffee farming communities.
The main social challenge is the economic precarity pushing Quechua campesino families off their land in the Lacco Valley. Located about 150 kilometers from Cusco, the Lacco Valley is a cloud forest region in the Andes-Amazon buffer zone of the Manu National Reserve, widely recognized as one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. When coffee farmers do not earn enough, they abandon their land in search of work in cities, and the forests they have stewarded for generations.
The model addresses this problem on four levels. Economically, farmers earn higher income from agricultural technical assistance and access to specialty markets. Socially, leadership and gender programs address women's exclusion from the coffee sector. Culturally, keeping families rooted guarantees ecological knowledge stays alive across generations. Institutionally, we build capacity, not control: once communities feel real impact, they can sustain their coffee operations on their own.
We build capacity so that communities need us less and less over time. Rather than creating dependency, our programs transfer knowledge, tools, and organizational structures directly to farmers and local leaders. As communities become self-sufficient, we are able to redirect our resources and expertise to new communities starting from zero, replicating the model across the Andean-Amazon region without diluting impact.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
