Latin American regions hoarded the Best Practices Awards
One Mancomunidad and three Latin American regions have won the first award of the IV Regional Best Practices Award, which is announced every year by ORU Fogar and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): The Mancomunidad of the Andes, from Peru; the Department of Nariño, from Colombia; the Department of Santa Cruz, in Bolivia and the Prefecture of Azuay, in Ecuador. The fifth award has been won by the “Basque Social Protection Model” by the Basque Government, which becomes the most awarded regional government in this award throughout its calls.
The awarded best practices are ex-aequo, however, the one that obtained a higher scoring was “SuperAPerú: Promotion of the Certified Exportation of the Super Foods Quinoa and Chestnut, as a joint interregional model between local farmers”, presented by the Mancomunidad of the Andes. It is a project that brings together the Regions of Apurimac, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Ica, Junín and Cuzco. The main aim is to enforce the value of two products that, with a high value in the global market, can contribute to the sustainable development and the reduction of poverty in the Andean territories. Thus, the contribution of the project to the comercialization of quinoa and chestnuts in the domestic and global market has been valued.
Nariño’s project, “Social Innovation, an opportunity to transform the territories”, is a plan sustained on three pillars: Open Government, Social Innovation and Collaborative Economy. Therefore, a government in which the relationship with the citizens allows to influence reality and daily life on the Nariño population has been developed. This model main purposes are to count with collective intelligence and collaborative work.
Santa Cruz presented the project “Markets friends with children and the youth”. A partnership with UNICEF, its main goal is to prevent and/or eradicate child labor in popular markets. This implies the participation of gremialist sectors that give up the physical space and furniture needed for the functioning of the “protection space” in the interior of the market, where kids and adolescents have the opportunity to do their homework, participate in psico-affective, recreational and training activities, among others.
“Crecer (Growing)” is a Food and Nutritional Security Management Project, with an integral and inter-sectorial approach. It began with the support of 20,000 small agricultural producers from Azuay, through the mixed economy firm of Agro-Azuay: an organization that has more than 25 strengthening programs for producers. The main aim is to establish mechanisms that support production, so as to guarantee the nutrition of people and communities, especially kids under six, in those areas that have been identified as deprived.
The “Basque Social Protection Model” presented by the Basque Government arising out of the decision to elaborate an integral plan to fight poverty in Euskadi. Fort he first time in Spain this plan establishesa system of minimum resources guaranteed based on the implementation of what commonly has been called “social salary”. This model is inspired by the politics against poverty in countries like France and the United Kingdom at the end of the 1980s, but that the Basque Country has portrayed with its own characteristics.
The award has had as the jury’s president Johannes Krassnitzer, coordinator of the ART program in the PUND, who was accompanied by people in charge from other United Nations agencies, like Sébastien Vauzelle, technical advisor of CapDel Programme in in Argelia or Rosa Suriñach, responsible of an UN-Habitat program. The academic part of the jury has been fulfilled by Carla Gutierrez, director of the International Relations Department at the O’Higgins University, in Chile, and Cristina A. Rodriguez-Acosta, subdirector of International Affairs at the Institute for Public Policy at the Florida International University. The jury was completed with Ney Barrionuevo, researcher and director of RIMISP in Ecuador and Martin Guillermo, secretary-general of the Association of European Border Regions. Anna Fernández, general coordinator of ORU Fogar, has been part of the jury and in charge of the jury’s Secretariat.
