:: Santa lucia past & present ::

History In 1976, following a land reform act, the Santa Lucia Cooperative was founded by a group of twenty landless campesino familes. The member families cleared areas of the forest for pasture to raise cattle and to grow crops such as naranjilla, tree tomato and blackberries. Living and working in the forest was hard, with only basic shelters to sleep in to start with, but for the first time these families had access to land and were able to make a living.

Land in the cloudforest quickly degrades once it has been cleared and in time, the environmental problems of farming in the forest were becoming more apparent. Some members of the community became interested in conservation issues and began to look for ways to protect rather than clear their forest. In addition, in 1988 the area was declared part of the Bosque Protector ( Protected Forest ) making hunting and clear felling illegal, threatening the families' livelihoods. In 1996, members of Santa Lucia Cooperative decided, with help from individuals and organisations such as the nearby Maquipucuna Foundation, to conserve their forest and to look for alternative ways of making a living from their land.

Ecotourism Ecotourism was identified as a viable alternative to farming that would help Santa Lucia to achieve its aim of providing a source of income for its members, while at the same time conserving the forest. In 1999 members of Santa Lucia began to build the eco-lodge with fallen wood from the forest; trails in the reserve were made and with much appreciated help from volunteers and other organisations such as Rainforest Concern UK and Quest Overseas UK , the ecotourism project was born. Members of Santa Lucia are now committed to conservation and are able to share with visitors their pride in their forest, and their knowledge of its flora and fauna. Click on Visit Us and Responsible Ecotourism Policy to find out more about our ecotourism

Today We believe that Santa Lucia offers a model of what a community owned and community run organization can achieve in terms of development and conservation. It is increasingly difficult for people in this area to make a living from agriculture, with unemployment and underemployment both very high. We therefore continue to strive to provide sustainable employment for our members and other local people, so that people are able to stay in the area rather than being forced to look for work in Quito or abroad. We provide training to ensure that local people are able to work at all levels in the organization and we are extremely proud to say that Santa Lucia is 100% run and staffed by local people. Santa Lucia today goes beyond merely protecting its forest and puts energy into actively conserving it. For information about this please click on Projects. Santa Lucia is also firmly committed to working for the benefit of the wider community for instance through our policy of buying from local producers where possible; through supporting other community businesses for example assisting a local women's artisan cooperative with their marketing; and through community projects for example nutritional and environmental projects and English teaching in the local elementary school.