We would like to introduce ourselves... SIMIATUG LLAKTA is an alliance of, and platform for: family groups, women's groups, workshops, youth initiatives and associations belonging to the indigenous communities of the Simiatug-territory, in the Bolivar province of Ecuador:
reference data: total population (INEC, 2010): location: height: surface: coordinates:
12,460 inhabitants / 51% women, 49% men / 44% are 0 to 14 years old; 99% indigenous (in 38 communities) and 1% mestizos (in the Parish); Western Cordillera of the Ecuadorian Andes; East – 4.500 masl.; West – 1.800 masl.; 91 km2; latitude North 9853521.7 and longitude East 724686;
Simiatug territory and Parish are located in the center of Ecuador, at the Occidental Cordillera near the Chimborazo, the highest volcano in Ecuador. Simiatug has an area of 91km2 with a variety of ecological floors between 4.300 and 1.800 meters from the Andean Páramos to the Pacific Coast. The settlers are Kichwas, indigenous people who live in the 38 communities. There is a lot of poverty in Simiatug which is the third poorest parish in the third poorest province of Ecuador. Agricultural resources are very limited, productive opportunities and jobs are very scarce, the Simitanian economic circuit is tiny. Male adults and young people of both genders have to defend the family economy by migrating to cities and the East. While they are women, mothers, single mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts who traditionally support the daily life of their large families. These conditions are documented in “LA VIDA EN SIMIATUG”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ0rYalq7Y&t=29s . Since 1986, we have always taken care of women and their daughters; they are the ones that need the most attention and solutions adapted to the changing conditions and aggressions of the several decades. Here is a review of the conditions of women before the Organizations:
Simiatug, since June 1986
Simiatug was horrible: the climate, the abandonment, the helplessness to which its inhabitants were exposed, was total, encompassing all their personal, familiar and civic existence. It was like an incubator that perpetuated medieval structures and of course, of the Hacienda of which all were slaves until 1981. Concepts that were internalized and still being mentally perpetrated about two more generations: models of violent, autocratic, racist and class models: exploitation of all resources in the area by outside merchants; contempt for women: polygyny and sexual slavery, illiteracy, lack of property, lack of independence in their marriage large and small family, premature maternity since 13 years. The young women were locked in their “ayllu”, which were communities very far from each other, destined for: domestic work, agriculture and grazing sheep. They did not enjoy education, because by the code of the Andean Marriage they have to get married at age 13th. To break these pathological conditions, the first thing was to approach the more vanguard parents and inspire them to send their daughters to school and then, to be trained in a useful job for the economic benefit of the whole family. Moved by the 'Liberation Theology', expanded in the 80s throughout South America, the Indigenous Church in Simiatug applied it, very slowly and cautiously against the 1% of “mishus” and “whites” that dominated the 99% of Indigenous people in the 38 communities. With a small group of women and teenage women learning: dressmaking, crafts, hygiene, health, handling of minor animals, etc.; they were the first women who could be literate and told the ones who didn´t know about the situations and options of other fellow women who had already made their way in other provinces. All this for the purpose of motivate them to try to be projected, to say, to speak as other women already did...
The year 2000 was crucial because with the dollarization moms were unable to feed their families. This made it clear that ´women´ to be able to develop as a person needed economic power. The resources of women are: their talents and artisanal skills, their orchards and animals. The Organization is made to using those resources, to produce systematically and through growing in volume, installing Processors and Workshops in the Town, making that all the gains from their work remain in their hands, in the Simiatug territory. The fact of being organized allowed, apart from female income, to worry among us from each other: to denounce to and defend from the aggressions to which wives and children and daughters in families are subjected; and find allies for Women Groups projects´ in several communities. Thanks to the Organization of Women in the Simiatug area, today there are real women leaders, presidents of communities. Today the communities, civil society organizations, boards and parish governments are more harmonious, balanced and impregnated by the existential realities of the Kichwa People of Simiatug. And today, Organizations, Entrepreneurships, productive and technical initiatives are integrated by women with a university career, Technologists and semi-professionals that allow them another quality of employment and income; and by their example, among themselves they perpetuate, help and disseminate happier models for their lives as women. In the 90s if you asked a partner: “What do you prefer, this one or this other one ...?” between two things. With her hat up to the septum of the nose, the cravat pulled up over her mouth, shy until she could no longer, the companions did not know how to choose between two things; because their hundreds of years in dependence had never given them a chance to opt ... Concepts like: "freedom", "democracy", "self-esteem” and “personal development" were not inscribed in their personalities. It is what took more years to train, while teaching practical skills is easy.
“mejor vivir” Currently, some 720 artisan women in the communities, charge fair prices for their work and with this personal security, they can worry about their most disadvantaged companions..., thanks to the success of the ´artSIMIATUG LLAKTA´ brand: textiles, shoes and baskets.
We have made way; today, it is the SIMIATUG LLAKTA / ASOPRICELAT GROUP and those responsible for their specific Value Chains who present Projects: ORGANIZATIONAL DATA
ASOPRICELAT, Association of Production, Industrialization and Marketing EL CIELO EN LA TIERRA RUC: 0291518664001, Ministry of Culture-MIPRO N ° 16160 of 09-26-2016, Legal Representative: Rodrigo Virgilio Bastidas López, email: simiatugllakta.bolivar@gmail.com webpage: www.simiatug.com FaceBook: Simiatug Llakta Bolívar
information
OUR PROPOSAL:
IMPROVE THE CONDITIONS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION OF LAS HUERTERAS IN SIMIATUG, Bolívar province, Ecuador as SIMIATUG LLAKTA GROUP we are united to:
SITUATION: About 60-70 women have talent as farmers, they love their organic garden and every plant that grows in it. GRUPO SIMIATUG LLAKTA developed since 2014 the 'Plantandina' seasoning that could provide them with greater family income if, with the support of this Project, they could be helped with better seeds, with enclosures from the orchards, irrigation and water storage so that with these implementations at the garden level in families, we managed to get certificates and stamps for the “Plantandina” dressing, in order to access export-markets and public-purchases. THE PRODUCT:
THE WAY TO PRODUCE ´PLANTANDINA´:
ARGUMENT: The SIMIATUG LLAKTA GROUP Mission is to economically empower women and their families through their resources and their work.
This presupposes generating tradable products nationally and internationally; food production and marketing is highly regularized, controlled and certified for consumer protection; for an economically growing and sustainable future of Huerteras, PLANTANDINA dressing requires 3 Certificates:
The objective of this Project is to achieve the basic certificate-BPA (Good Agricultural Practices) granted by AGROCALIDAD after a whole process of implementation and
monitoring of the orchards that sell their raw material, vegetables and aromatic plants to the Processor of Plants, to Rosa Chisag, in the Village of Simiatug;
Achieving this certification implies: - protect the orchards, such that no animal enters, A1; - organize and record all activity, dates and measures related to crops; - fertilize using decomposed organic manure; - have access to, and store water, A2; - have an irrigation system installed, A3; - watering seeds-certified, A4; among others….
No “Huertera” is able to make investments so that its plot is certified so as to have the right to sell its vegetables, medicinal and aromatic plants (the BPA-Certificate will become mandatory for any commercialization of vegetables within some time). We need allies to help the companions in obtaining family income with the agricultural activity, typical of the conditions of these women: peasants and mothers. This Project is articulated that the beneficiaries participate in 18.8% of the investment needed by each of them; what they are paying with a small cash entry and deducting them from their regular delivery of vegetables and aromatic plants to the Plant Processor.
video-PLANTANDINA,
PLANTANDINA, a healthy dressing from the Ecuadorian Andes: https://youtu.be/vKFOjLF8wl8
responsibles of the 'Agroecological' Value Chain:
Rosa Elena Chisag Chisag Narsiza Graciela Lucintuña Aguagallo Technical - Production ´PLANTA - Administrator ´Simiatug Llakta Group´ DINA and Huerteras/os. and Plant Processor.
Hugo Redrobán Cornelia Kammermann Technical - Crops and Advisor: Certificates, implements. Stamps and Projects.
BANK CONTACT: BANCO PICHINCHA S.A., Calle Azuay, Guaranda, prov. Bolívar, Ecuador; SWIFT-code: PICHECEQ370 IBAN-code: 066 012 867 Account-Name: Comité de Desarrollo Integral EL CIELO EN LA TIERRA Account-Number: 2100020563
WOMEN IN SIMIATUG:
On behalf of the companions and partners of the ‘agroecological’ Value Chain of GRUPO SIMIATUG LLAKTA, I am pleased to look for donor friends who could support us, and humbly ask Walmart Foundation for a donation of $ 5.000, with best regards and thanking you very much, Cornelia Sylvia Kammermann, General Coordinator GRUPO SIMIATUG LLAKTA +593-98 5891 577 – simiatugllakta.bolivar@gmail.com