Our Project for Peace

This month, our team spoke with students from Eastside High School in Gainesville on a student-organized “Peace Day.” We shared how our team’s project supports bringing peace and sustainability to our partner community, Maras Ayllu, and how the $10,000 Projects for Peace Grant we received in 2019 has helped us progress in our mission.

Our team’s mission is to support community-driven and sustainable development programs that help our partner community meet their basic human needs. We have been working on this by promoting economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for the community through a functional irrigation reservoir. Maras Ayllu is an agricultural community that relies heavily on the land for food and income. During the three-month dry season, rainwater is simply not enough to irrigate the crops that the community depends on. With approximately 70% of the community owning and/or being employed on agricultural land, having an irrigation reservoir is directly connected to the economic livelihood of the community. We are designing the improvement of an existing, not-functional irrigation reservoir that will provide 69 families in the community with a source of irrigation water during the dry season. With an average family size of three, there will be 207 direct beneficiaries. The reservoir will allow this land to produce crops year-round, providing necessary food and income for the local farmers of Maras Ayllu.

The community gathers for a townhall meeting in 2018 to discuss the need for an irrigation reservoir.

By aiding our partner community in nurturing a larger crop yield that provides more food and income, as well as a more stable work environment, we are helping to build a more sustainable economy. When communities are productive and experience decent work and employment, economic growth is promoted. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), economic performance and peace are often mutually reinforcing. That is, better economic performance assists in building peace and vice-versa. A stable environment can allow businesses and governments to flourish. Our hope is that our reservoir will allow for prolonged sustainability and growth long after we have implemented it.

Our team surveying potential reservoirs for improvement and expansion in July 2019.

The Projects for Peace grant is helping us achieve this goal by providing necessary funds to implement our reservoir. This grant aims to motivate undergraduate students to create and implement plans for building peace in the 21st century. The top submissions are granted $10,000 each. This grant directly pays for the costs of testing, constructing and traveling to complete our project. We are extremely grateful to Mrs. Kathryn Wasserman Davis for making this opportunity possible.

If you would like to join in on helping us bring peace and prosperity to our partnered community, consider becoming a donor or sponsor and view our 2020-2021 Corporate Sponsorship Packet to get started.

References

Institute for Economics & Peace. Business & Peace 2019: Analysing peace as a precondition for a sound business environment, Sydney, September 2019. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/reports. (accessed 21 October 2020).