Colombia: campesinos make profitable companies

Over 200 campesinos from Colombia and Latin America who have converted their small rural businesses into profitable companies participated in the “First International Meeting of Rural Microentrepreneurs” from June 1 to 2 in the Hotel Tequendama, Bogotá.

The international meeting was organized by the Assistance for the Development of Rural Microenterprises Project (PADEMER) of the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and sponsored by the Andean Development Corporation (CAF) and the Inter-American Institute for Agricultural Cooperation (IICA).

The main objective was to promote a space for training and reflection among small rural entrepreneurs where they can share experiences and achievements in their efforts to guarantee a better quality of life for their families.

The meeting was organized into groups based on subject areas, where the microentrepreneurs had the opportunity to describe their successful cases. The topics for the first day were: diversification of opportunities for income and jobs, building of social fabric and access to financial services. The second day was devoted to the experiences of specific productive sectors: craft, agroindustrial and tourism.

The Colombian microentrepreneurs came from places as remote as the Quizgo Indigenous Reserve (Cauca), Cartagena del Chairá (Caquetá), Tutunendo (Chocó) and La Guajira. The campesinos who shared their creative businesses strategies included agro-forest service providers from the Naya Region (Cauca), rice transplanters from Tolima, women recyclers from Urabá (Antioquia), exotic flower growers from Cauca, paper microentrepreneurs from Belém (Pará) Brazil, and microentrepreneur providers of tourism services from El Chocó. They were accompanied by sericulturists and craft persons from Cauca, campesino producers from eastern Antioquia, beekeepers from Chile, and the cooperatives of strawberry and blackberry growers from Norte de Santander.

At the meeting, under the slogan “Social Equity for Rural Areas,” rural producers showed how support for microenterprises, provided by the National Government, was a specific strategy to combat poverty and build greater equity in Colombian rural areas. Finally, the meeting heard about the innovative experiences that PADEMER has developed to provide financial services to rural microentrepreneurs, such as Community Savings and Credit Funds and Incentives for Capitalization of Rural Microenterprises.