Spring 2021

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Hammocks in Honduras By Mario Pinel, Technical Assistant for the Dry Corridor Alliance Project

Watching the men and women in the village of Santa Anita weave colorful strands of fabric into hammocks brings a deep sense of pride in what they have accomplished. I’ve been working with this community in Honduras’ Dry Corridor for the past year, supporting them as they formed a collective and a business plan. Before ACS-PROSASUR’s activity, they were making hammocks and selling them individually without much success. These hardworking people could not earn enough to support themselves. When we approached the community, they allowed us to show them the advantages of producing and selling their handcrafts as a team by starting a micro-enterprise. We worked with them to acquire higher quality raw materials and develop a business plan that became the foundation for their newly formed small business. Humble and determined, the five women and four men in the group are committed to the

project’s growth. Now, they sell hammocks to clients in El Salvador and have generated employment in the town, thus creating a greater impact not only for their collective but also for the whole community of Santa Anita. Making a hammock takes multiple days, and now each member of the group comes in at a different stage in the creation to complete the product. It’s a beautiful experience to see each household putting so much dedication and effort into their part of the process of producing hammocks. As a part of the Dry Corridor Alliance–Promoting Food Security in the South (ACS-PROSASUR) team, I am proud to be part of this story, to be able to bring about real change in their quality of life through something as basic as a business plan. Seeing the social and economic growth in the area motivates me to continue working with more groups in the Dry Corridor, to encourage them by showing success stories like this one. n

Lilian Amanda Solorzano holds a finished hammock.

Above: Working together, the cooperative gets more business.

In this Issue

A Digital Library Oasis 08 p.

07 Dispatches

Updates from around our world

08 // Digital reading oasis opens in El Salvador 09 // • Big Books make a big impact • Field Notes 10 // Afghan Children Read: By the numbers 11 // Sign language makes remote learning accessible 12 // In Focus: Nigeria Lake Chad Basin Program

A Virtuous Cycle 14 p.

Big Books 09 p.

14 Cover Package A Virtuous Cycle:

Impact investing for a more prosperous West Africa

ON THE COVER: Habiba Suleiman, business manager for WACOT Rice Ltd., stands in a rice paddy in Kebbi, Nigeria. Photos by Rasheed Photography for Think Creative .

Photos by Victor Mercado Perez (Snap Shot), Michael Waidmann (Digital Library); Lamine Dembele (A Virtuous Cycle)

4 | Think Creative | Spring 2021

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