Green warehouses: productive empowerment initiatives for women

With the purpose of promoting the productive empowerment of women through comprehensive, sustainable, and replicable mechanisms, CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, carried out a meeting in alliance with the Asociacion Civil por la Caracas Posible and UN Women, in the framework of the PASOS Program, to present Bodegas Verdes, historias de emprendimiento (Green Warehouses, stories of entrepreneurships), a publication that compiles the experience of women in the development of businesses with environmental components in the municipalities of El Hatillo, Libertador, and Sucre, in Caracas. 

Jose Carrera, Corporate Vice-President for Social Development at CAF, stated "This initiative may be copied in other countries of the region to promote female empowerment by acquiring new skills and developing talents so as to energize the local economy and especially community work in popular sectors, through environmentally friendly businesses". 

Green warehouses is a project based on inclusion, empowerment, integration, and sustainability, which has allowed 180 women from the municipalities of El Hatillo, Libertador and Sucre, in Caracas, to organize and receive training to produce and market cleaning products using recyclable containers. The initiative, leveraged by a rotating fund as an effective microfinancing instrument, was designed to mitigate poverty and gender inequalities. 

For Fredery Calderón, President of the Asociación Civil Por la Caracas Posible, it is necessary to recognize that those who are most vulnerable must be the main recipients of protection and support during a crisis. Calderón further said, " Green Warehouses is an option which, through the use of microcredits, translates into an alternative to reduce proverty". 

One of the beneficiaries, Miriam Bravo, commented that the project represented an experience in empowerment and self-esteem, and stated that the project's success relied on the fact that "women are the engine that moves Venezuela". 

The meeting included the participation of José Carrera, Corporate Vice-President for Social development at CAF; Fredery Calderón, President of the Asociación Civil Por la Caracas Posible; Maribel Gutiérrez, Depute Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Venezuela;  Violeta Domínguez, coordinator of CAF's Inclusion and Gender Equity Unit; and Francisco Olivares, from CAF's Direction for the Promotion of SMEs and Microenterprises.