HEKS/EPER is making a difference in the «Agricultural production and market systems» in Latin America
In Latin America HEKS/EPER operates in Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela. Most of the people in these countries live below the poverty line and cannot meet their basic needs. The reasons for this include land evictions, political instability, insufficient government investment and recurring natural disasters. HEKS/EPER is helping to improve livelihoods and bring about a more just and peaceful society. This entails helping the rural population to obtain land titles and improve agricultural production and disaster preparedness, buttressing civil society in the defence of human rights, and supporting the government in implementing development plans. HEKS/EPER is also currently providing humanitarian aid in Haiti.
Contact us:
Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER)
Communication
Seminarstrasse 28
8042 Zurich
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 360 88 10
E-mail: projektdienst@heks.ch
HEKS/EPER is active primarily in rural areas, where prosperity and quality of life for the poorest are closely bound up with properly functioning agriculture. This is often not the case, however, as depleted soil, poor transport routes or lacking know-how hamper profitable agricultural production. HEKS/EPER helps people engage in profitable and ecological agriculture. This calls for sustainable production techniques and a great diversity of products so as to be able to react to environmental risks and market changes. In order that produce can be marketed successfully, HEKS/EPER enhances smallholders' knowledge of the market and militates for market systems in which smallholders are able to survive. In so doing HEKS/EPER mediates between producing, processing and subcontracting enterprises.
Rural development and empowerment of civil society
HEKS/EPER supports rural communities in improving food security and incomes, and in the building of a strong civil society.
Promoting local development
HEKS/EPER assists rural communities in building up agricultural production chains so as to enable them to meet their basic needs with the additional income.
Honduras Country Programme
Strengthening self-determination and autonomy
In southern Honduras, HEKS/EPER supports projects for the development of rural communities, the protection and defence of human rights, as well as disaster preparedness programmes.
Colombia Country Programme
Rural development and peacebuilding
In Colombia, HEKS/EPER is contributing to a more just and peaceful society and to improving the livelihoods of internally displaced families and rural communities.
