Rapid Development

Our Rapid Development project is designed to boost economic activity in the Maya Chortí villages (aldeas) of the Copán region, so that families become self-sufficient and can maintain a reasonable standard of living without dependence on outside aid. In the three municipalities where we are active (Copán Ruinas, Santa Rita and Cabañas), there are about 230 villages. None of them is thriving today, according to the mayors of the municipalities.

Average per capital incomes in these villages are typically in the range of $1 to $2 per day, which represents extreme poverty. An unskilled day laborer earns about $5 per day, when he is lucky enough to be working.

The root causes of village poverty are many, including centuries of oppression, dislocation and discrimination; steep slopes and poor soil; poor infrastructure and services; inadequate education; health problems; and often no access to the necessities of life such as water, sanitation and power.

We always planned to implement a project like this, because IPA will be supporting our villages indefinitely unless we help them to become self-sufficient. Our job is not done until we achieve this, so a project of this kind is essential.

This project began in 2017 as a pilot program supporting just three villages. Thanks to a Global Grant from Rotary Foundation, It has now grown to supporting 11 villages.  

We chose to adapt the FXBVillage model developed by the FXB organization (fxb.org) in Switzerland. It has demonstrated an 85% success rate over 27 years of projects in Africa, Asia and Columbia. 

The FXBVillage model has many attractive features that we replicated in Copán:

1. It is based on the idea that it is essential to tackle all of the drivers of poverty simultaneously. 
2. It is a community-based approach where the funder is helping villagers with their project, instead of taking charge and telling them what to do. 
3. The program provides seed capital for micro-enterprises 
4. It is a fixed-length program. Each village is supported for three years, at the end of which participating families are expected to be self-supporting. 
5. The program includes training and weekly follow-up for the entire duration of the project.
6. It includes a formal Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) process.

This project involves various partners to provide necessary support and services. These include: 

• The three municipalities where the project will be implemented, and their mayors.
• A doctor who is training health care workers from the villages.
• An agronomist who provides training in nutrition, agriculture and home gardens.
• A specialized trainer for topics such as motivation, customer service and social issues.
• A specialist who plans and supervises construction projects in the villages.
• A program manager responsible for the project, who also provides training in money management, micro-enterprise and business planning. 

The project  includes a formal Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) process, so that we have solid data to back up our results. We conducted household surveys at the start of the project (for baseline data) and repeat the survey on every anniversary. The questionnaires were designed to measure our impact on economic activity, standard of living, and quality of life. Every action we take will be evaluated by relevant metrics.

Early results are encouraging as we move into the 4th year of the program.