The project Foundation of Female Entrepreneurs in partnership with the Sisters of the Presentation Marie Pouspan, started prior to the pandemic. It involved providing training for trainers in various parts of the country. The goal was to improve the effectiveness of their work. We worked with the religious community and lay people to help them find ways to overcome the existing and new challenges faced by Covid. We have developed a really diverse community of professionals and vulnerable populations to collaborate and co-create solutions.
The Pandemic created a greater need in these communities, and the crisis challenged the financial stability, emotional well being, and social fabric. We overcame the logistical challenges by meeting weekly over the last year to continue in our capacity building work.
The results have been successful, we helped dozen of projects help thousands of people all across Colombia. We have been able to successfully launch a bakery. That is providing good income (profits) for the five families involved. We are expanding that project to increase production and the impact to other families. Another project has bought and is raising 'Lechones' for market. We are working with social impact projects, feeding over 50 homeless everyday, helping communities strengthen social capital and building resilience. This project is fully funded by a recycling effort that pays people in rice and beans for bringing material, which is then sold to pay for the food. All of these projects used bottom-up solutions based on problem-based teaching approaches found in the DYME methodology.
I want to thank everyone that has been involved.