The indiscriminate extension of the agricultural frontier to the Paramo (moorland areas) threatened the water supply in the rural community of Chilco. This situation led to a rethinking of the people and they decided to revive their Paramo and thus restore the water storage capacity. This proved to be a strategic step which also had a positive effect on the economic situation of the families living there.
Experiential travel, practiced by family and associative ventures allow the Karanquis community of San Clemente, in the north of the Ecuadorian Andes to travel the world, being at home; generating at the same time an income that benefits the collective. The visitor does not stay in the superficial approach of observing the landscape but experiences a one-to-one coexistence with the culture, the place, its people and the Andean worldview.
The microcinemas network of the Chaski Group, born from the efforts of filmmakers with a social vision, has constituted as an alternative route for the exhibition of a cinema that entertains, excites and promotes thinking, facilitating the popular diffusion of contents for a truthful communication. The microcinemas, located in 9 regions of Peru, are gradually becoming a local cultural association that produces community cinema, (re) building cultural identity based on the social reality of their territory. It is a communicational and organizational experience capable of stregthening local identity and culture, counterbalancing globalized media penetration.
In the Amazonian border region of Ecuador and Colombia, the problems that threaten the population are not few: oil extraction, pollution, social violence. The testimony of Belia Vaca, inspired by the “Wiphala” system of the Environmental Clinic, is a faithful demonstration that it is feasible to change reality from oneself life, beginning processes and transformations within reach, without ignoring at the same time problems of greater magnitude. I do what I can – Belia’s motto is to awaken other people from her own testimony and concrete actions.
What began with the recovery of the Cochabamba´s Municipal Ex-Slaughterhouse, turning a place of death into a distinct cultural center, is now a referential experience for culture and development. Culture not as a distraction but as a contextualizing element and where creative intelligence and collaborative work open the way to the “future we want”, constructing our own narratives and getting rid of paths of acquired thought.
The experience of local processes of citizenship in two regions of Antioquia indicate diverse routes, responding to different contexts, characterized by humanitarian affection due to armed conflict, manipulation and/or social and political exclusion. Victims re-encounter the capacity to play their citizenship and inhabitants of territories manage to get involved in a leading way in local development, designed among all and for the benefit of all.
Families in the commune of San Gabriel del Baba are now convinced about agroecological production and now they are enthusiastic promoters of the cause. Their farms became completely agroecological and, so far, their biggest challenge has been to find alternative markets and conscious consumers, but these set back shave not changed their conviction, because, for them, the market and the economic part are not the most important goals.
The management of land plots with agroforestry systems demands conviction and a continuous careful work. The situation in which the pioneer producers of agroforestry Amazonian systems currently live shows that they live well, producing with the forest and without the need to continue deforesting and burning the vegetation.
Fifteen years ago the Red de Guardianes de Semillas (Seed Guardian Network), a collective with full horizontal relations, was born in Ecuador, dedicated to the rescue of native seeds. Each guardian, member of the network shares and applies their knowledge from their autonomous environment. There is a wealth of experiences and practices around production and food, housing and other areas of daily life. Its common denominator: to build the future in the present.
In Loma del Esmeraldal, residential sector of the municipality of Envigado in the valley of the Aburra (Colombia), the indiscriminate urban densification, product of the speculation and misrepresentation of the regulations to facilitate construction licenses provoked a response from the citizens. The Ciudadano Envigado Collective (Citizen´s Collective Envigado) managed with resistance and proposals the recovery of lands ready for construction and turned them into public spaces, improving the quality of life of the residents.