Cooperative cashes in

When Ilaria Garcia and her family lost all their crops during Hurricane Mitch in 1999, COMUCAP was on hand to help. Now Ilaria Garcia is member of a shampoo and soap making cooperative, which forms part of COMUCAP. The group started with ten members but now have 25.

“When COMUCAP first came it was just to give a glass of milk to the children here” Ilaria explains. “This was in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch. The Red Cross helped via COMUCAP.

“We lost our beans and maize crops, the roads were blocked and everything became very expensive to buy.

“Two students from a private company knew of COMUCAP and offered us training for free because they wanted to test out some courses. Here they focused on shampoo making in another town, Mescalito, they did bread making. We never thought we would end up doing something like this.

“In the beginning it was hard because we had to borrow money from friends and community organisations. We had to make lots of sacrifices. As things got better more people joined us. Now we have 25 members.

“Now it’s great because COMAL is involved in selling our product. They help us because we don’t know about marketing.

“Before this project we just managed to eat to survive, we didn’t know other people in our community, we were not organised.

Now we grow bananas, mangoes, pineapples and other fruits. We are more united, we know more, and we have lots of positive stories.

“Thanks to God, people like CAFOD are supporting us. Without this it would not have been possible. Now we see our children will have a better life than we have had.”

Marcelina provides technical support to the 16 member organisations of COMUCAP. She teaches organic farming and helps the women grow aloe vera plants to make the soap and shampoo.

"The women produce lots of aloe vera," she says. " They sow the seeds in August and May and harvest in January, March, May, July and September.

"As well as making soap and shampoo from the aloe vera we sell the juice to businesses in Germany through a Catholic women's group there. They also sell organic coffee for us.

"At the start we each took 40 baby aloe vera plants to Las Cabanas . Now there are many more so we have been given 200 each to grow in our own fields.But we still need to grow more

"My daughter Dinora will start working in the new factory to export the pure gel from the aloe vera to Switzerland and El Salvador and if we have enough maybe to Germany too."

Concrete benefits

Ilaria and her family now live in a house made of wood and stone, with a corrugated iron roof and cement floors.

“There are still other members of our group who live in old houses like we had, she explains. “We feel really happy to live in new houses. We sleep well. We now actually sleep in a bed. Before, we slept on the floor.

"When we were children we didn’t have proper clothes and we suffered. Before we couldn’t buy clothes from shops, we had to repair them and if we couldn’t then tough luck.

"There are still people here who live like that. But there’s a big change now for our children. They have no idea what it was like for us. They sleep well. They go to school with a new bag and school uniform, shoes.

"Children now have more opportunities. I only went to primary school. That’s why we are illiterate but our children can read. We have many members who can’t read.

"Bit by bit we have learnt and we are improving. Before, we used to be scared of people. We locked ourselves in our homes and didn’t go out. Before we were really shy, we hid from people.

"Thanks to COMUCAP we now have more confidence, trust and friendship. We have the chance to exchange experiences with others and this helps us understand our own situation better.”