31-10-2019 | di COOPI

Vamos Piuranos: new income generating activities after the Niño Costero

In 2017, the Niño Costero hit the coast of Peru, leaving 93,000 people homeless and more than 300,000 in vulnerable conditions.

Judith, who lives in the district of Catacaos, Piura region, one of the most affected by the flood, remembers those days very vividly: "Many of us shared the same problems after the flood, none of us was adequately prepared, we did not know what to do. Some houses were destroyed and my animals drowned. They were our primary source of livelihood”.

Following the 2017 emergency in Piura, COOPI continued implementing the project entitled "Come on Piuranos, let's build resilience for safe and sustainable development!", funded by the European Commission (ECHO- Civil Protection And Humanitarian Aid Operations), in partnership with Care Peru and Radio Cutivalù, to carry out protection and livelihoods recovery programmes for about 2,500 families in 12 communities in the region of Piura, laying the foundations for a risk management awareness involving every single activity of the community.

Thanks to the project, Judith was able to start a small shop of chifles, a kind of well-known potatoes specialty, and explains how the programme also strengthened women’s empowerment within her community: "Now that we have been trained, we know how to respond in case of another Niño Costero. Each of us has been given a task and we are also coordinating with one of our neighbour who owns a two-floor house, where we can protect our equipment and food from future floods. In addition, we are trying to raise awareness among the rest of the community so that they too can organize themselves and do not risk losing everything like two years ago.”

Judith shop is one of the 15 income generating initiatives promoted by the project, which involved about 200 households in the area, who have now been trained to respond to disaster related emergency situations.

Following the severe floods that hit almost 2 million people in northern Peru in 2017, COOPI continues to work alongside local authorities to support the reconstruction process by implementing disaster risk management programmes.

The project carried out by COOPI and funded by ECHO, "Vamos Piuranos", aims to strengthen the response capacities of communities and local authorities, living in areas exposed to hydro-metereological risks by informing, training and preparing people operationally and helping them to recover and maintain their livelihoods through community economic development initiatives.