Ayacucho (Day 1)

We came to Ayacucho to investigate better the initiatives around Entrepreneurship projects done by CEDRO and so far we had a very good impression.
Ayacucho is a place with lots of history, it was the land of the Wari's, a warrior tribe which lived with the Incas. The Wari's were very powerful thus respected by the Incas that were not able to dominate them.
Later on, the region suffered from the terrorism with the Shinning Path (Sendero Luminoso) which also contributed to the expansion of the coca plantation.
After the Shinning Path was dismembered the region started to recover and reborn - there are still some terrorist acts in the region but way more isolated.
In the beginning, lots os NGOs came to Ayacucho to help and lately the city and its municipalities are investing a lot in new business initiatives.
CEDRO is part of this movement and as we could see in other parts, they study very well the population before starting a project. In Ayacucho, there are projects for Communication and Entrepreneurship,which was initiated in 2008. Another thing is that the entrepreneur programme here is very professional as they give initial capital for the projects that are approved besides supporting the business implementation with an external consultant.
We visited today three business, a tailor office, a coffee packager and a restaurant. They have very distinc characteristics, let me try to describe them:

The tailor place was run by three women that run through the course and won the right to buy a small sewing machine. Busines has been growing and they acquired a new machine and are thinking about expanding even more. In their case, a market study was essential to understand whether their services were required in their neighbourhood.

The sewing place

The models they already produce

They are also designing some models

In the second place, there was the coffee packer (they also do the roasting and grinding). It is a family business as the daughters are taking over the company and bringing them forward by diversifying production as it has started with coffee but they now have chocolate, soya milk and others. The Emprende programma from CEDRO helped them mainly on legalizing the product in order to expand their business but production is still small with around of 40 kilos of coffee production per year.

Coffee is roasted, grounded and packed

The third business was a restaurant (Cocina Andina) that has the main value to provide fair and home made food from the Cocina Ayacuchana. We have tried the food there and it is indeed excellent as you can feel that they use natural ingredients and herbs. The restaurant started small, when their business plan was approved they got the oven, plates and some pans. Still today, the fridge is rented but they recently moved from the outskirts to the city centre of the town. Their customers are local people and you could see that they have movement all time, including in a monday night which is always a difficult day of the week.

The restaurant speciality is the Cocina Ayacuchana

The kitchen, which is already small for the demand

Marcelino explaining to us his journey

These small initiatives are the ones raising people out of poverty, these initiaves, although simple and short ranged can, in the future, become something else and create the right environment for a more entrepreneurial city that can blossom in their social and economical conditions.

You can see other pictures here!