A Placement of Cooperation and Collaboration

By Tunde Ogunje, 2nd year MDP student

My field placement is in conjunction with two MDP students, Noran Tarek and Karla Godoy, from the University of Minnesota. We are working for the Rainforest Alliance in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Petén, Guatemala. While I am joining the project remotely, Karla and Noran are physically present in Guatemala.

The project is the continuation of the work the University of Minnesota MDP program has been doing over the years, working with the Rainforest Alliance in trying to develop community enterprises from the Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. The NTFPs which consist of the ramón seed, chicle, xate, honey and allspice are created by community concession members in the Reserve who spend their livelihood and earn a good income to create items for the open market. These concessionaires are trained by the Rainforest Alliance, and the forestry divisions in the Petén to properly certify their work to be produced and sold worldwide. The green label seal by Rainforest Alliance certifies the products to be organic, fair trade and sustainable.

We are all working on four projects simultaneously but each of us have responsibility to lead at least one project. I am leading the project to develop a feasibility study for ACOFOP (Association of Forest Communities of Petén) to access government loan to establish a manufacturing business to process Ramon seeds into flour to make cookies.

Raw Ramón seeds

Noran leads the project to develop an Export-Readiness Assessment Report for Non-timber forest products (ramón, xate and honey) in the project area in Guatemala while Karla, who has been doing the job of translating and interpreting English to Spanish and vice versa, leads both the development of working document to formalize the relationship with Teeccino, an American coffee alternative company, and the reviewing and updating an existing business plan for COADAP (Apiculturists Cooperative of Petén).