Through nearly four decades, AGEXPORT has developed different strategies and programs focused on helping Guatemalan women to start a professional career and provide economic resources to their families by joining the export value chain. These experiences are currently being summarized on a specific document called “Methodology for the inclusion of rural women on Guatemala’s economic development”. This document will display the management model required to empower rural women and integrate them on manufacturing and agriculture exporting processes.

Guatemala is a country where 51.1% of its population are women, and as such it needs to generate clear development opportunities for both men and women. With this in mind, AGEXPORT is currently detailing a series of strategies to empower women and provide them with economic opportunities, with the objective of generating higher employment to the Guatemalan population and leading a transformation to become an “exporting country”.

A clear example is AGEXPORT’s Cardamom Committee, which has implemented several development programs on rural areas, mainly focused on women.

Thanks to the support of several cooperation agencies we have been able to increase our areas of influence and include more programs focused on women through different methodologies. Nowadays, we help 290 different groups of women at different communities (a total of more than 5,000 indigenous women), linked to the export process of Guatemalan cardamom, said Mrs. Lucrecia Quevedo, vice-president of AGEXPORT’s Cardamom Committee.

Mrs. Quevedo also indicated that AGEXPORT is currently undertaking strong efforts to state on a single document all its history and knowledge on economic empowerment of rural communities, with a special focus on women. This document is being developed with help from the international community and will soon be presented to the public and donated for all public and private institutions to implement it and make use of all the years AGEXPORT has invested on rural development.