40 Women Improving Income through a Sweet Business

Laura is an ACDI territorial promoter and a member of the Los Perez community in the northeast of Tucumán province. She managed to embody this role offering her unconditional support to Los Perez residents, especially to female entrepreneurs. The role of territorial promoter in ACDI is key to guide and achieve processes of participation, organization and motivation in targeted groups.

Laura refers that, when ACDI began its workshops in 2017, women were very reluctant to participate. The main causes were related to the cultural premise that “women belong at home and must dedicate themselves to housework”. She witnessed how with empowering strategies these barriers melt down and thus women gained confidence and skills to start collective bakery businesses and other achievements. “Nowadays, every ACDI workshop counts with their full participation and desire to put into practice what’s taught and shared there"

The activities promoted and developed by ACDI are of great personal and collective learning, both for the promoters team members and beneficiaries. In conversation with Laura she said: "This work gave me everything. I am grateful today for the openness of the community, the bonds that we were able to forge and the objectives that could be achieved together”.

Los Perez is a rural area far from the urban town of Taco Ralo. With ACDI’s encouragement, three groups of women organize themselves to produce baked goods and sell them in the community. They are the only suppliers of these products, therefore, they manage to make profits from the activity as well as satisfy the families needs. Laura contributes to this process as a facilitator, guiding the group's in their day- to day activities; promoting reflection and new skill learning to strengthen productive entrepreneurship and also offers her own home as a place for production.

In addition, the establishment of a community garden is in a design and organization stage, counting with the neighbor’s motivation and Laura’s  guidance who, through the use of the Kokue mobile application, accompanies the learning and execution processes. This initiative will contribute to agroecological production actions raising awareness and training towards food sovereignty in the community.

This promoter is a living example of the way in which work done in a loving and committed way can impact your own community by becoming an agent of change.