Projects, programs or initiatives that strengthen producers' cooperatives and respond to the interests of young people
Fernando Bautista Arriaga
RAYEN Youth Local Managers and CEO of the Rainforest Alliance.
Fernando Bautista Arriaga

Since 2018, the Rainforest Alliance Mexico has been implementing the following projects in the Soconusco region of the state of Chiapas. Sustainable Agriculture of Coffee and Cocoa, funded by Hivos (2018-2020) and Fundación Gigante (2018-2024) and APSyM, funded by USAID (2018-2023), with which organizational processes were improved (including leadership), production, harvest/post-harvest, commercial and business (improvement of marketing prices), communication and positioning at the local, regional and national level of the producer organizations RAYEN and POT, which together involve more than 170 people who produce coffee and cocoa under agroforestry systems. All of the above has been the basis for making the organizations more attractive for young people to join the production chains and seek opportunities for training, sharing experiences and generating self-employment opportunities for themselves. To support the interest of young people, the Rainforest Alliance Mexico designed work plans that included complementary activities between projects, which ensured the follow-up of both the strengthening of the organizations and the processes of education, training and integration of these young people into the organizations.

  1. Rainforest Alliance Mexico projects implemented in the Soconusco region have complementary activities, such as experience exchanges, that can be replicated or followed up by any of the projects.

  2. A coordinator in the region is familiar with the projects' work plans; this facilitates the identification of work groups and/or specific activities that make the work of each project more efficient, generate greater impact and respond to the interests of young people.

  1. It is vitally important to maintain a person in the region of implementation and to encourage constant communication with the producers, through field visits, phone calls or virtual meetings, to follow up on the development of the processes of strengthening the organizations. Without this constant communication, it is likely that the strategy of training local managers (LG) would not have emerged.

  2. The LG formation process is very long; it can take up to two years to consolidate the group. It should be sought that this training process should start as soon as the lead or umbrella project starts.

  3. The flexibility in the work plans and activities of the different projects or initiatives allowed the training process to be addressed from different angles and with different approaches.

  4. The level of desertion during the training program was 50%. In order to reduce this percentage during and after the training process of the LGs, it is key to develop together with the organizations a strategy to avoid desertion.

Implementation
Local