Since leaving coca crops behind, Jani no longer spends long days growing them. Instead, she uses her leadership abilities for the welfare of her community. Jani is the legal representative of the Association for Comprehensive Sustainable Development of La Perla Amazonica’s Peasant Farmer Reserve Zone, where nearly 800 families live in the southern part of Colombia’s Putumayo Department. Jani is seeking to implement traditional productive practices in the region, practices that can be handed down to younger generations. This way she contributes to gradually restoring what it means to be a peasant. As she says, "being coca growers is not the same as being peasants."
In this episode of 'Women Seeding Peace', Jani tells us how participating in the PASO Colombia’s Contingency Plan to Support Ex-coca Grower Families has given her the necessary tools to empower herself, as well as other women and the community, to partner and educate themselves on production and marketing matters.
Like Jani, women who have substituted coca crops across Colombia are creating a new life for themselves and their communities. The “Women Seeding Peace” web series collects the stories of participants of PASO Colombia’s Contingency Plan, which supports families registered in the National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS). Today, these women are the driving forces of sustainable development in their territories.
The Contingency Plan to Support Ex-coca Grower Families is funded by the UN Multipartner Trust Fund for Sustaining Peace in Colombia, and implemented by PASO Colombia in coordination with the Presidential Office for Stabilization and Consolidation.
