MANTA, Manabi
The merger of the Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (AEI) project with its Re-emprende program and the support of private companies again aims to provide development in the populations that were hit after the earthquake of April 16, 2016.
After the powerful earthquake, AEI, with the support of companies and entities, such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Favorita Corporation, General Motors, Danec, Difare, GPF Corporation and Arca Continental, undertook a program that sought economic reactivation in 29 cantons of the provinces of Manabí and Esmeraldas
After strengthening some 8,000 entrepreneurs from both provinces with technical assistance and credits, they obtained 3,700 credits through 7 million dollars in productive loans, which in turn generated 17.5 million in sales in favor of those ventures.
One of these examples is Roger Castro, a member of the Don Juan Artisanal Fishing Production Association, from the Jama canton, who pointed out that last year he sold close to a ton of seafood to various businesses, including businesses in Quito.
General Motors donated twelve food trucks, assembled trucks destined for free to entrepreneurial businesses. According to Cristina Cajiao, representative of this automotive company in Manabí, the entrepreneurs showed their worth and effort to deliver food with all safety processes.
After these results of five years of contribution in favor of enterprises, the AEI, through its Re-emprende proposal, will focus on a new product to strengthen gastronomic businesses in Manabí.
Andrés Zurita, executive director of the AEI, said that after this support they identified within the productive chains that were part of the Re-emprende program that there was a productive line in all of them, mainly in the success stories, and it is related to gastronomy. . For this reason, it was proposed to the Ministry of Tourism to generate or take Manabí’s gastronomic production to another level.
From there was born the proposal called “Positioning Ecuadorian gastronomy”, based on the recognition of the best or most popular dishes that are made in Manabí.
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“We seek to position the gastronomy of Manabí and Ecuador in the world, and for that we are going to present a proposal to the mayors of Manabi to build a strategy for positioning gastronomy and develop about 15,000 entrepreneurs in relation to gastronomy in the next four years,” said Zurita.
The proposal has already been presented in Manta before several mayors and authorities in the country. It was learned that a fund of 20 million dollars is already structured for this initiative that will finance it and that it has three defined axes: 1) the type of product that will be presented, 2) quality, protocols and safety and 3) the model of business to be employed.
The priority is aimed at Manabi entrepreneurs. For this reason, the mayors were invited to join this initiative, with the purpose that, together with an advisory and technical team and the people who make the products, they define which are the iconic dishes of each of the 22 cantons. manabites.
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In the next few days, a consultant from the Eloy Alfaro Lay University of Manabí will visit each of the 22 Manabi cantons to learn about the recognized gastronomic proposals in each of these cities, and thus in two months have identified which are the emblematic dishes of each one of the cantons
The Manabi historian and professor Libertad Regalado is part of that advisory council that will support this initiative. She pointed out that Manabi gastronomy has been recognized as a Patrimony of Ecuador, but that now an information survey will be carried out.
In an investigative work of this manabita, some 60 ancient dishes were recognized as elaborated in Manabí and that do not have the influence of products that arrived with the arrival of the Spaniards; he even considers ceviche to be one of the dishes.
“My hypothesis is that the first ceviche that goes out into the world is the ceviche of spondylus. We are talking about 4,500 years ago, because the meat of the spondylus It is the delicacy of the gods and much desired by the leaders of the aboriginal peoples (…) of Peru, Bolivia, Mexico. The spondylus He traveled thanks to the Manabi nauts”, Regalado pointed out.
Source: Eluniverso
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