Panama – Darién Community Development Program

Building Social Infrastructure, Strengthening Communities

The remote Darién region of Panama shares a porous border with Colombia, making it vulnerable to refugees, drugs, violence and lawlessness. In order to mitigate these problems, USAID funded the DECO-Darién activity, which ended in 2006. DECO- Darién partnered with local organizations, indigenous groups and 55 selected communities to strengthen local governance, build social and productive infrastructure, facilitate sustainable economic development, and foster good environmental stewardship.

DECO-Darién implemented activities in agroforestry, ecotourism, institution strengthening, agriculture, conservation, and microenterprise and infrastructure development. Many of these activities were in the buffer zones of protected areas, such as the Darién National Park, biological corridors, and forest reserves, and they involved the indigenous Kuna, Emberá and Wounaan peoples.

The project’s activities yielded impressive results, including

• assisting 23,780 people (50 percent of whom were women) through DECO-Darién’s work in promoting social and productive infrastructure
• reaching 64 communities in East Panama, Kuna Yala and the Darién region
• helping to create community development strategic plans for 55 communities
• completing 44 social infrastructure projects, including building classrooms, rural aqueduct water systems, community centers and school cafeterias
• completing 46 productive infrastructure projects, including refurbishing or building public markets, an abattoir, agricultural processing and warehousing centers, a transportation terminal, market roads, a handicraft center and an organic manure facility
• creating 15 microenterprises

The program’s agroforestry activities included

• providing technical assistance to a local medicinal plant/herb microenterprise in processing, marketing and business planning
• partnering with a local NGO, Fundación Dobbo Yala, to create a medicinal botanical garden business among the indigenous Kuna
• partnering with Fundación Dobbo Yala to create a soap and shampoo microenterprise using native plants
• partnering with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to promote a certified wood business in the Emberá and Wounaan areas
• providing training and technical assistance to a broad spectrum of regional stakeholders in various aspects of agroforestry, including recommending farm technologies and crops that minimize environmental impact, managing forest and water resources (including applying “green” certification criteria) and managing crop nurseries
• providing technical assistance to more than 70 indigenous vegetable “ivory” craftsmen, helping them to diversify designs and market their products more effectively

Ecotourism activities concentrated on the development of a Darién ecotourism route in partnership with the Instituto Panameño de Turismo (IPAT), indigenous leaders, and local tourism committees and businesses.

In the area of local institution strengthening, DECO-Darién facilitated a participatory training process in which all 55 program communities developed strategic plans. These communities received training in community organization and leadership, enabling them to manage the infrastructure projects the program built.

The program provided technical assistance in strategic planning, management and fundraising for local institutions such as the Emberá-Wounaan General Congress (the group’s highest governing body), Fundacion Nueva Tierra (a local NGO that runs an agroforestry school) and Darién’s two municipal governments, Chepigana and Pinogana.

Agricultural development activities included partnering with Fundación Dobbo Yala to help the indigenous Kuna improve production of cacao, a culturally significant crop, and to train five agricultural cooperatives in business planning, administration and marketing. These cooperatives produce and process rice, corn, tubers and plantains.

In addition to the agricultural processing, agroforestry, and handicrafts activities mentioned above, microenterprise development activities included partnering with a local NGO, Casa Taller, to develop microenterprises related to handmade recycled paper products, second-hand clothing sales and handicraft production. In addition to issuing a subgrant for these activities, DECO-Darién provided training in business planning and marketing to all Casa Taller microenterprise clients.

DECO-Darién’s environmental conservation activities included

• conservation education related to the construction of water systems and basic watershed conservation and management
• funding a study of illegal logging in the Darién conducted by DECO-Darién partner WWF
• technical assistance to the local Santa Fe government in solid waste management in areas such as collection methods, recycling, dump site management and the development of a comprehensive community education campaign