PUENTE A LA SALUD COMUNITARIA

Puente proposes food sovereignty as a path towards sustainable solutions to economic poverty and the fractured social fabric caused by socio-economic, migratory, and environmental factors through the construction of an integrated system of agroecological production, economic solidarity, and the health and well-being of the community. We contribute to food sovereignty by providing technical and logistical support to farmer families in rural Oaxaca to promote the adoption of agroecological practices, promoting social economy through financial literacy and commercialization workshops, as well as supporting microenterprises in building market access and product development, and leading nutritional workshops across demographics to help counteract the impact of industrialized food and encourage a return to a traditional diet that embraces local, agroecological food.

While our underlying primary objective is always to contribute to food sovereignty, our current objectives for Puente as a “project” are to:
1. provide farmer families with the tools and knowledge they need to cultivate their crops agroecologically for the health and well-being of their families and communities,
2. collaboratively build new local and regional commercialization chains for microenterprises that connect them with other local producers that practice agroecology and solidarity economies,
3. promote a holistic approach to community health that prioritizes a return to traditional, whole-foods eating, exercise, and mindfulness, and
4. engage with a broader cross-section of the public as well as build our alliances with partner organizations through the learning opportunities at our farm-laboratory, Puente Rojas.

To promote commitment and sustainability, Puente supports and accompanies two regional networks. The Mixteca Amaranth Network has been operating for 7 years in the Mixteca Alta and the Central Valleys Amaranth Network was formed 8 years ago in the Etla Valley, both under the principles of community health, economic solidarity, and agroecological practices.. The networks are made up of farmers, groups of microbusinesses, and consumers, adding value and ownership through collective decision-making to every stage of the production, commercialization, and consumption cycle, and increasing local organization around healthy food systems. The networks have their own leadership committees that work directly with the Puente teams to develop projects for the production of amaranth and other crops, elaboration of agroecological inputs (organic fertilizers), and the organization of microenterprises for the commercialization of fresh produce, products made from amaranth and other crops, and inputs. We work together for self-organization and co-responsibility, ensuring the sustainability of our mission and impact.

Together, with the regional networks, we have identified obstacles to food sovereignty: the difficulty of cohesion in marginalized communities; the low profitability of the agroecological cultivation process due to land displacement, water scarcity and climate change; lack of access manuals for farmers on agroecological cultivation processes, and the lack of literacy on issues of development, business management, production costs, and commercialization chains.

To solve these problems, Puente raises, through the synergies between its different activities, integrated lines of action, which are aimed at not only building capacity and autonomy within our partner networks but also contributing to a better-informed consumer community for a sustainable and mutually-beneficial cycle of production, commercialization, and consumption.

The first line of action focuses on identifying and training on every stage of agroecological production, primarily of the amaranth grain, from seed selection and soil preparation through the entire cultivation process and up to the negotiation and sale of the harvest within solidarity networks.

The second line of action is aimed at promoting good practices for the collection and management of water to counteract the most damaging impact of the climate crisis in the Oaxaca region.

The third line of action is comprehensive training through participatory practices for microenterprises to understand how to analyze and develop products, from ingredient sourcing through building short commercialization chains as a network.

The fourth line of action is focused on training the general public on critical nutritional, environmental, and lifestyle issues to empower them to take ownership of their own health and their impact on the environment.

Puente has worked since 2003 to promote community health, evolving to incorporate agroecology and solidarity economies as core projects for a more holistic approach to food sovereignty. We work closely with key stakeholders to build long-term projects that ensure community buy-in. Our community promoter program trains local young adults to join our team, receiving a monthly stipend, and professional development. The end goal of our community promoter program is that the participants will use what they’ve learned from their participation to start their own projects in these same communities. We have seen this program bear fruit with several promoters opening their own agroecological businesses (general stores, biofertilizer production, infrastructure projects) as well as pursuing higher-level education in themes of community development and sustainable agriculture. Our current technicians were all trained as community promoters and selected from this program. As full-time staff members, they are key to realizing our training program with community promoters and carrying out our program activities, working with their own local community members.

Puente believes strongly in the importance of coalition building and strategic alliances. Our most important partnerships are with the two autonomous regional networks - Red de Amaranto Valles Centrales and Red de Amaranto Mixteca.

One of our principal partners is the amaranth company San Miguel de Proyectos Agropecuarios, with whom we jointly applied for and won the only nationwide prize for Human Development and Sustainability from Fundación PepsiCo, resulting in a four-year grant to continue our project adapting small-scale appropriate technology for amaranth production, microenterprise support, and community health initiatives in Oaxaca and Hidalgo.

In 2020, we were proud to be founding members of Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria (Alliance for Food Health) which successfully lobbied the Oaxacan congress to pass the first law in Mexico that prohibits the sale of soda or junk food to minors. We will continue working in this alliance to improve the enforcement of this law and to improve community understanding of the dangers of industrialized food consumption.

We are also founding members of Grupo Enlace de Amaranto México, an alliance of producers that work together to promote amaranth production and consumption. Our biggest achievement within this group was the inclusion of amaranth in the “canasta basica”, a selection of basic foods that are considered necessary for a healthy diet. We continue to work within the group to share technical resources and support new amaranth initiatives.

2003 — Our first program was Healthy Families, working with mothers, grandmothers, youth. and children to present amaranth as a valuable but affordable ingredient in family meals.
2007 — In 2007, Puente added amaranth cultivation and production as our second program. Growing the grain seemed to be the next natural step for Puente, partnering with farmers in the regions to add amaranth to their crop production.
2008 — Clarence H. Moore Award for Voluntary Service
2010 — Stanford Medical School Community Partner Award
2010 — Launch of first Amaranth Day, an annual festival that brings together all of the communities Puente works with in the city of Oaxaca for panel discussions, food tastings, workshops, interactive exhibits, live music, and cultural demonstrations, and a kids’ activity area.
2011 — The final piece of Puente’s fundamental programming was the Social Economy program, launched in 2011 when Puente developed his first strategic plan and realized that we needed a link between grain production and consumption by families in the community. Microenterprise groups buy the grain to make amaranth-based products that include popped cereal and granola, crackers, crackers, tortillas, tostadas, and flour, a gluten-free baking alternative
2015 — INDESOL Impact and Social Commitment Award
2016 — In 2016, as our partner farmers increasingly noticed the impact of climate change on their crops, especially the scarcity of rain in the Central Valleys, and when our tests revealed depleted soils and weakened plants, Puente and the networks collectively decided on the transition to 100% agroecological practices for a stronger, more nutritious plant with greater resistance to external factors.
2018 — Latinoamérica Verde Award
2020 — In 2020, we transitioned the “Healthy Families” program to be a cross-disciplinary initiative, “Health and Nutrition” that informs all of our programmatic work and our work with the Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria (Alliance for Food Health). With the Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria, we successfully lobbied for the revision of state law for the protection of children’s rights to include the prohibition of the sale of junk food and soda to minors.
2020 - Transition of our annual Amaranth Day celebration to a 2-day virtual festival with panel discussions, workshops, cooking classes, and live interviews with an impact of 3,500 unique participants in 7 countries.

Today, Puente works with 2 autonomous regional networks and 35 communities throughout the Oaxacan region. Our farm-laboratory at Puente Rojas offers a living model of sustainable living and agroecological food production in workshops and intensive trainings.