Location – North region of Salta, Argentina
The Project – The LATA Foundation is working with the Buena Vida Foundation on two local development projects through community based tourism.
Peña Morada Project: This project aims to generate new tourism activities in the Guaraní Peña Morada Community, who already offer basket weaving workshops and sell crafts made out of liana. The project will strengthen the community’s dietary habits based on workshops to recover ancestral Guarani recipes and the development of gastronomy services with locally sourced food.
In this way, 25 families will be able to strengthen their local capacities, add value and give continuity and improvements to the local food production chain (through a tree nursery, chicken farmyard, and a community green garden). It is crucial to have the adequate infrastructure to carry out the preparation of food that meets the health and safety requirements implied by the local authorities. In addition, this project aims to register the oral memory and inter-generational gastronomic knowledge which might otherwise be lost.
Yariguarenda Project: This project aims to develop new tourism activities in the Yariguarenda Community, which already offer trekking, biking and gastronomy services to visitors. With the requested funds, the project seeks to build a “bird observation box/tower” designated to visitors and the general public arriving to the region in search of endemic birds and bird watching tours in the jungle. This way, 15 families will be able to strengthen their local capacities through observation training workshops that will allow them to carry out the monitoring work at different times of the year. With this, at the end of the project it is expected to have a list of birds of the area as well as high quality images that guide visitors during the tourist experience.
Our support – We provided funds to build a craft centre in the Guaraní Peña Morada Community for them to offer basket weaving workshops and sell crafts made out of liana. In 2017 we funded the construction of a visitor centre so the community has a space where to receive tourists and to offer their tourism activities. In 2019 our funding is been used towards these two existing projects.