Ramona Beatriz Domínguez

Ramona has been part of the women’s group for over a year, focusing on reforesting degraded areas and developing her apiculture project. She values the forest as a source of water, food, and climate regulation. She aims to invest in beekeeping and water reserves to sustain her family and remain in her community.

Ana María Roldán

Ana María is the president of MINKA and a key leader in the women’s group. She emphasizes participatory decision-making and ensuring that women have access to training and economic opportunities while promoting environmental conservation. She played a pivotal role in securing funding and technical support for the group’s projects.

"The fact of stating that we were not here to impose a technological package, but rather to generate solutions to problems that we could identify together, was a path in which we had to overcome challenges related to understanding, to defining what participation meant. We worked on different levels of participation... It was a process in which, together with the technicians who made up the team and the grassroots promoters, we were able to move forward alongside the women who truly wanted to be the protagonists of Colonia Alegría."

Iracema Da Luz Ferreyra

Iracema joined the women’s group through MINKA, focusing on reforestation and sustainable income generation. She advocates for reducing deforestation by promoting alternative income sources such as vegetable gardening and poultry farming. She envisions the community as a regional seed producer, fostering local economic opportunities while conserving biodiversity.

Andrea Pereyra

Andrea is an active member of the women’s group in Colonia Alegría, working to promote sustainable livelihoods and environmental conservation. She and her husband rehabilitate degraded areas by planting native trees and seek alternative income sources to reduce deforestation. The group organizes workshops on biodiversity and sustainable practices to improve their quality of life.

"Our idea is to move forward as women, to have our own income on the farm while helping the environment, protecting our water springs, planting trees, and taking care of our biodiversity, which belongs to us. We want our children and grandchildren to know about plants and to stop cutting down the forests because most people clear the land to plant annual crops and survive. We don’t want that anymore. We want another source of income so we can stop cutting and start planting more trees, whether along streams or at their headwaters, because plant roots help keep the springs from drying up, which benefits us greatly, along with the air and everything else."

Barreto Isabel

Isabel values the forest for its ecological and health benefits and has been working on reforestation and sustainable farming. She supports community-led conservation efforts and highlights the need for long-term environmental stewardship.

"We want them (our children) to know about the plants that many are removing and eliminating. We want to restore those plants, continue producing them so that, in the future, we have good oxygen for our health and for the children who are coming, who are already being born with many illnesses."