Hugh Aprile, director of Mercy Corps, talks about the effort to help Venezuelan migrants who arrived in Colombia, what has happened with entrepreneurship out of necessity and monetary transfers in 2020.
What is Mercy Corps?
A 40-year-old US-based NGO born on the west coast, in Portland, Oregon, and works in 40 countries around the world. In Colombia, we have been working for 15 years at the beginning with a population displaced by the conflict and also in humanitarian responses to natural disasters. We have worked in development in rural communities, but in general to help the most vulnerable people in the country to find solutions and get out of situations of poverty, our approach is that. We have worked in all the departments of the country where there is extreme poverty and in recent years we have focused on the response to the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis, Venezuelans who are in very precarious situations.
You have, among many of your objectives, one very clear, which is to support companies that have been affected by the pandemic. What actions are they taking?
It is worth clarifying that our work is with very small enterprises, micro-enterprises in rural areas such as in the coffee growing areas of Cauca, and we are helping Venezuelan families with small enterprises to strengthen their businesses. Now we are looking for the possibility of connecting this Venezuelan population with formal jobs. From 2005 to November 2020, Mercy Corps has supported more than 540,000 people through different social programs. In one year we have transferred (from November 2019 to November 30, 2020) more than US $ 14,300,000 through different humanitarian aid programs and with our partners in 12 departments of the country to more than 152 thousand people.
When we talk about Mercy Corps support to companies, I clarify that the focus is very new entrepreneurship or groups of people in fairly poor areas of the country looking for economic opportunities. And how do they support them?
We have groups of people who identify if it is an enterprise or a small company that involves several people, we have been in coffee-producing areas where there are families who have coffee, but who also want to look for another type of enterprise to diversify their income, then there are small traditional companies such as bakeries or different food production services for a community, and what we do is we help these groups to understand well what they want to do with their businesses, identify if there is a market, start with training in financial and accounting issues, the mission of what they want to do and how they want to grow in the future. There is also something different because of who we are, so we go to communities affected by the conflict such as migrant populations, and that is the psychological component, many of these people have experienced traumas in their lives and that is why it is important to adjust and work on that before think about a successful business, that is why there is a component of psychosocial work to understand what they have experienced and begin to overcome these difficult situations so that they can have clearer ideas and feel better as people, strengthened to follow the path of the company .
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsMany studies that have been carried out in Colombia confirm that more than 90% of the business fabric in this country is made up of small and medium-sized companies, including micro-SMEs and even self-sustainability businesses there. What results have they achieved?
We have had processes for the selection of companies with a promising future and we have given more money, as a donation, to help them grow; We have established relationships with the Seine, because it has a very important role, a capacity to reach the most remote areas and help those groups on which we are focused to grow. We have collaborated because as Mercy Corps we cannot solve everything, alliances are key.
The question we asked the vast majority of those interviewed this year was whether solidarity is sustainable. What do you think?
Yes (laughs), you ask me. The basis of everything we do is solidarity. We are here as an international body with an emphasis on solidarity. The funds we receive are solidarity from both donors and the United States government, as well as the private foundations that support us and us as employees. Through solidarity we are going to move forward, without that there is not much hope.
In Colombia, more than five million jobs were lost in a single month during the hardest part of preventive isolation and strict quarantine. How do you support the recovery of jobs?
It is a critical and complicated situation. The largest program that we currently have is one of multipurpose money transfer without conditions, that is, we make money transfers to the Venezuelan population and to a percentage of Colombians. Many are Colombians who have returned from Venezuela. This program sends money to families that we categorize as very vulnerable, who receive transfers for six months and we believe that it is enough for people to move on, to reduce stress and buy food for a period. It was a program that was in place before the pandemic, but we have grown and managed to multiply our response in those communities since March, when the crisis began. We think that this transfer of money to the neediest people helps the communities in general, because that money is spent in that same local community and that helps to strengthen local economies.
Many international programs suffered budget cuts this year, as was to be expected with the global economic crisis. You too?
No, fortunately we have grown during this period and that is partly linked to your question of solidarity, we have seen that our donors have seen the need to continue supporting even more, so for the moment we continue to work and support more people. You spoke of poverty reduction. What balance do you have of this poverty reduction with the actions you have taken?
Cash transfers help to solve the most basic problems that the poorest have for a short period of time, if these people are not thinking about how to cover their basic needs for a while that allows them to think about looking for other opportunities along the way. We cannot eliminate poverty, but it is possible to facilitate opportunities to reduce poverty. And that is why we are working on how to strengthen the small enterprises or micro-enterprises that already exist so that they can survive and help those who want to create new businesses. Every small business that is born is a reduction of poverty in the local community because not only they manage to get out of poverty but they manage to hire other people and, in the end, they are supporting other people who need it in the midst of the country’s difficulties. .
You have a lot of focus on agricultural projects due to the issue of crop substitution, but Colombia is experiencing a regrettable upsurge in violence. How was this 2020 in that area of action and, in the middle of the conflict, what balance can you show?
It is a very complicated issue and with COVID even more so. People with the economic crisis, because there are families who see a solution in illicit crops, but despite that there is a lot of interest in our program and there are families who want to seek a different life, move to a different economy and this program offers them a different path, and it is still in high demand, there are many families who want to participate. In this sense, the situation has not changed our work, we continue in those communities, but obviously the security situation is getting worse and that complicates our work in the sense that we must be very careful, I am very concerned about the safety of the personnel, we must have care to operate in those areas and ensure that we are protecting both the people and the communities that are participating. But we have learned that when a valid solution is offered, which people understand, they realize that there are different options to illicit cultivation and that continues, it has not changed. What are the plans for 2021 in the midst of so much uncertainty? To continue with the monetary transfer program, we are going to focus on helping the search for economic opportunities both in the creation and in the strengthening, helping those who have the skills to achieve we work more formally looking for opportunities despite the challenges, we think that 2021 is going to be a difficult year, we have not finished with the COVID crisis, we must adapt to the new reality that is presented and that will happen by learning and growing along the way.
