Bright Hope is reaching out to a group of people known as the Mapuche Indians, who live in a rural South American town in Chile.  Over the years, some have unfairly tried to characterize these families as “lazy and without initiative,” but Mark Lennox, Bright Hope’s Latin American Partnership Developer, told us the exact opposite after he visited this area.  He found a community of people (all centered around their local church) with a strong vision and an impressive start to two new job creation initiatives that are impacting over 600 people in the area.  All they lack are a few simple tools and materials to develop and expand their ventures.

The woman pictured here is Marta Cheque Marin.  She is 41 years old and lives in this community. While her husband finds work works wherever he can, Marta gets up every morning, puts on a pair of rubber boots to feed the chickens and pigs, cleans the house, prepares the family meals and works in their vegetable garden. “I work hard so my children have bus fare to go to school every day,” she said.  “Sometimes they need to buy a book, but I cannot help them with that.”

The families have beautiful fruit trees growing on their land.  “The fruit falls from our trees here, but we don’t have what we need to make the jam, so what we don’t eat just goes bad and we have to feed it to the pigs,” Marta said.  “If we had sugar, jam jars and a few other things, we could make and sell the jam.  This would help our children and improve our living conditions,” she concluded. The timing of this funding is very important, because the fruit is ripe for jam production each year in the months of November and December.

The Mapuche men have their own hope for a business enterprise as well:  First and foremost, they want to be able to stay in town with their families, but the need for work often drives them out to surrounding areas.  They are currently helping the women with the start-up jam business, but their vision is to develop a woodworking and furniture making enterprise using available wood in their area.  They have the wood but not enough tools and equipment to grow this enterprise enough so they can work locally and remain in their own homes.

Your gift will help propel this community toward their goal of getting their new enterprises established and strengthened.  These new ventures will strengthen the local church, the families and the entire community.

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