Ayacucho and Huanta (Day 2)

The second day in Ayacucho was pretty full and we continue to visit business ideas in order to understand better what is the impact of business model generation in small scale entrepreneuship, we started with two businesses that are more than interesting.

The first one uses cactus to produce various handcraft such as lamps, frames, tables, earrings and others. What is interesting with the cactus is that it is a raw material that is abundant in the region and its properties are light and at the same time hard. The only issue with it is that it takes around 20 to 40 years to have a cactus that is ready for use so some thinking about the business sustainability will be needed in a medium/long term.

Products made of cactus



Explanation on the production process

The second business was some sort of school formed by youngsters that were graduated in several fields of knowledge and decided to give classes to develop the children in Ayacucho. The main idea is to develop some children that have potential and give them free or very cheap education. This business has the profile of other new business, the youngsters have tried to open the school on 2006, and then on 2008 again. They succeeded but they had to close again. On 2010 they have been through the Emprende programme (this is the name of the CEDRO's programme that teaches Entrepreneurship) and finally reopen in 2010 as they were one of the awarded initiatives. The results are already appearing as they have gone very well into the Peruvian mathematics Olympics and several 2nd places on other competitions like that.

Talk with the social innovator

One of the spaces used to teach children

After that we went to Huanta, a different province that is around one hour from Ayacucho. Huanta is interesting because it shows one of the first districts that saw the potential for business developments in small scale. CEDRO has developed the Emprende Progamme there and the municipality has hired themselves some consultants to continue the programme. We have seen some initiatives from the first year:

The first was a farm that grows chicken and cocks, the chicken are taken to the farm to produce eggs and the cocks are sold, just one remains to be the reproducer. The eggs are organic as they are fed with organic corn since they are raised up thus getting a better price for it. The business is very sustainable, the only issue is the wolf that sometimes attacks the chickens.

Piero with the pollitos

Organic eggs

 

Meeting in the municipality of Luricocha (notice that the symbol in the flag is an avocado)


The second initiative is a girl that sells popcorn. With the money awarded from CEDRO, she bought a popcorn car and she now owns already 3 cars. She is soon diversifying the business and will start offering fried potato and banana to schools.

One of the Popcorn car (started with one and there are four already!)

The last intiative was a pig farm where the pigs were awarded by the Emprende programme. The business is also growing as no pig has died yet and the profitability is strong.

Pig growing site

The trip itself was very usefull to understand how CEDRO has been working with new business generation and also to understand the profile of business we are talking here. More important, it shows that small initiatives using people's creativity can indeed take people out of poverty.

If you want to see all pictures, you can click here!