The Yala'yalaa School for Women's Empowerment & Positive Leadership
La Guajira, Colombia
The Wayuu, Colombia’s largest ethnic group, are often referred to as Colombia’s “forgotten people.” Their ancestral territory in La Guajira, the second poorest region in Colombia, is considered a “climate sacrifice zone” where rising temperatures, rapid desertification, and prolonged drought threaten food security and Indigenous life ways. They face many challenges, including state abandonment, political corruption, water scarcity, and lack of basic services. Most Wayuu families do not have electricity or running water despite that the region is rich in numerous natural resources (coal, gas, oil, precious metals) that are extracted and exported out of La Guajira, leaving no benefit to the local communities. In addition, there are very few income earning opportunities for Wayuu folks, especially for women.
The Yala’yalaa School for Women’s Empowerment, an initiative of the One Thread Collective, is addressing these challenges through a 10-month Sustainable Community-Led Entrepreneurship course. This program brings Wayuu women from multiple villages together to address urgent challenges in their rural communities, such as food and water scarcity.
Yala'yalaa means empowered or brave in Wayuunaiki. The goal of this school is to help these marginalized women achieve economic independence while building more sustainable, resilient communities in La Guajira, a region that has been exploited for centuries for its natural wealth.
Through the support of a Purpose Earth grant, the project will be able to onboard 45 Wayuu women from rural communities across La Guajira, Colombia into their Yala’yalaa School for Women’s Empowerment. For many of them, this will be their first experience in a classroom.
Each woman they train emerges from decades of economic exclusion with the tools she needs to build a more sustainable future for herself and her entire community. This grant also helps in purchasing food, transportation, instructor fees, and other supplies.
The grant will also fund additional one-on-one or group mentorship in order to begin implementing the women’s sustainable community project ideas that developed throughout the course.
“By funding these initiatives, Purpose Earth will further our goal of empowering and up-skilling women as a way to build stronger, more self-sufficient communities and reduce dependency on government welfare, foreign aid and exploitative multinational mining companies.” – Jackie Gilbert, Executive Director and President of One Thread Collective
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