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Interaction
News from Latin America and the Caribbean • Number 22 • April 2007
Alliance Between Projects and and Community Revives Vallejuelo
Municipal district from the poorest region in the Dominican Republic braces for cycle of development
Upon learning that this was the method
being used, Maria Marciano – a Brazilian from
the Order of Dominican Sisters and the Seed
Photo: Alianza para el Desarrollo de Vallejuelo
of Life Agricultural Training Center – decided
to take up a challenge: to plant the onion
seedlings directly in the soil. She intended to
prove that production could be increased sig-
nificantly by adopting a different technique.
“The Seed of Life Center purchased the worst
land in Vallejuelo to conduct its test,” explai-
The community is discovering solutions for problems that used to seem unsolvable
The municipal district of Vallejuelo has
Farmers used to employ a technique for
become synonymous with change. The
cultivating onions that offered low levels of
believing in the power of a union. With the
first allowed them to germinate in cell packs
4,000 families living there have reasons for
support of social organizations, young people
productivity: the transplanting method. They
fallen to just over 11,000. The production of
Vallejuelo has become
synonymous with change.
An alliance formed by social
actors is transforming the
local reallity
sufficient to sustain local development, and
and later transferred them to the field. The
hampered young people’s personal growth.
children as young as 4 were used to do the
and the municipal authorities, they formed
an alliance that is taking concrete steps towards transforming the local reality.
In the late 80s, Vallejuelo had nearly
40,000 inhabitants. Today, this figure has
onions, the region’s main commodity, was inthe low levels of investment in education
There only seemed one way out of this stale-
mate: leave. Thousands of families migrated
in search of opportunities.
cultivated area was irrigated by hand and
planting. “Since they are smaller than the
adults, they could do it quicker,” explained
ther farmer Ramón Zabala.
ned Marciano. “It was a smaller plot than the
locals were farming. Even so, we managed a
harvest 40% bigger than theirs”.
The Vallejuelo League of Farmers soon
adopted the new technique. The next step
was to construct warehouses to store the
produce, increasing the bargaining power
with middlemen. Migration started to fall
following the construction of an aqueduct
that resolved the major constraint to raising
production: the poor quality of irrigation.
The change in the method of cultivation
and the new aqueduct prompted a sharp rise
in production.. The impact of these changes
is visible not only in the high spirits of the
community, but also through the pragmatism of small businessmen who left Vallejuelo during the wave of migrations in the past
decade and are now returning to the district
as a result of the good business prospects.
Now, Local Farmers are Learning How to Improve Their Marketing Capacity
The solutions found for the three ma-
farmers will have to be trained to negotia-
watermelon,” revealed Marciano. But before
rigation, outmoded planting techniques
overseas. Along these lines, one successful
mers has agreed that it needs to improve its
jor problems affecting farmers – poor irand storing the onions in their own hou-
ses – have opened new horizons, but also
created new demands that require quick
answers. These include the need to learn
new marketing techniques. This means the
te with companies both in the country and
experience of contracted production of
seedless watermelons by importers in the
United States and Israel has demonstra-
ted the productive potential of Vallejuelo.
“We exported 120,000 tons of this type of
sealing any further deals, the League of Far-
marketing capacity.“This is precisely what we
are working on at the moment,” said Simeona Merillo, president of the organization.
Read more at the Kellogg Foundation
website: www.wkkf.org.
Interaction
News from Latin America and the Caribbean • Number 22 • April 2007
interview | Wilma Duval Orozco, from FUNDASEP
“Education is the Challenge for the Integral Development of Vallejuelo”
Leader of Dominican social organization explains how the alliance of local projects is driving the topic education
The executive director of the Foun-
dation for the Development of Azua,
San Juan and Elias Piña (FUNDASEP), one
of the organizations supported by the
Kellogg Foundation in the Dominican Re-
public, examines the progress achieved
in Vallejuelo and the role of education in
the economic growth of the district.
What is the major challenge for
the development of Vallejuelo?
Education. There’s no doubt about
“The topic
of education
is present in
everything. The
farmers know
that they need
to step up their
knowledge to
improve sales”
it. There is a major crisis in the quality
DASEP, engaging with social actors, building mini-alliances with youth
and farmers to address local problems. We need to create a new awareness about the role of education in the local development.
How can this be done?
The community is discovering that it is capable of finding solu-
tions for problems that used to seem unsolvable. This was the case
with the construction of the water system. On some days there were
200 or so people working for free on the aqueduct, the majority youth.
It was a remarkable response from the community. The same could
happen with education. Vallejuelo has discovered the value of mobilization and understands its potential to make important changes.
Does the community see a relation between these problems?
The Alliance For the Local Development of Vallejuelo tries to
of education. Class attendance is inconsistent and there are not
illustrate this relation in discussions held with families, youth,
district offers few services, teachers who do live in Vallejuelo often
cause farmers now have enough water to improve onion cultiva-
enough school days: only three days per week. Since the municipal
spend an entire school day sorting out problems they can only resolve in other towns.
How does the alliance of projects intend to change it?
Organizations in the alliance such as CAJIR (International Rural
Youth Advisory Council) and FUNDASEP have their own specific projects to tackle this problem. CAJIR, in the area of education; we at FUN-
farmers and municipal authorities. Production has increased betion. Children no longer have to work in the fields or fetch water
from the river; now they can go to school. To secure better prices,
farmers need to step up their knowledge of marketing techni-
ques. The topic of education is present in everything we do in
Vallejuelo. This is why we say that education is at the heart of the
integral development of the district.
other news
educational purposes and for playing games.
Warehouse Gives Families
Back Their Houses
and Playroom is the town’s high ground,
cash crop in Vallejuelo. Until very recently,
Playroom Improves Family Relations
The International Rural Youth Advisory
Council (CAJIR) operates in areas such as
agricultural production and education. In
Vallejuelo, the organization has developed an
institutional strengthening project geared
The location chosen for the Vallejuelo Library
where there is a view of the whole valley.
“The idea of enjoying the pleasure
towards local development. One of the goals
of playing while you learn promotes the
district by means of a participative strategy.
a commitment to the education of their
is to improve teaching in the municipal
“A good quality education is not only the
responsibility of the local authorities, schools,
and teachers, but also of society at large,”
said Paloma López, secretary general of the
organization in the Dominican Republic.
One of the ways found to encourage the
participation of the community and, at the
same time, overcome the apathy of families
when it comes to education, has been to set
up a public facility with Internet access for
involvement of families and helps develop
children,” explained the historian Ricardo
Fernández, also the architect behind the new
project.“The floor of the Playroom is itself a
huge checkerboard on which are represented
some of the principle games created over
time.” Maribel Comprés, from CAJIR, reveals
that some the adults enjoy themselves
more than the kids in the playroom.“In
the activities we organize on the streets of
Vallejuelo, parents slip back into childhood.”
Onions have for decades been the main
it used to be given pride of place in the
houses of the local farmers. Since there
never used to be anywhere to stockpile all
the produce, each farmer stored it as best
they could. “I’ve lost count of how many
times I’ve slept with onions under the
bed”, recalled Simeona Merillo, a farmer
and the current president of the Vallejuelo
League of Farmers. The apparently simple
solution, to build a warehouse to be used
by the whole town, required the farmers
to organize into an association. “It was
only after we gave our backing to the
League of Farmers that we began to think
about collective solutions,” said Merillo.
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