The inclusion work of PASO is about walking alongside, accompanying communities in uncovering new opportunities and bringing their dreams to life.
Rural communities suffered greatly during two generations of armed conflict in Colombia, which was in large part spurred by a sense of political and economic exclusion that compelled individuals to join guerilla groups. During the signing of the Colombian Peace Agreement in 2016, it was clear that rural development and reform to reduce poverty and inequality was key to long-term peace and stability. PASO Colombia (Sustainable Peace for Colombia), a regular Frontlines partner, was founded to support ex-combatants reintegrate in society by serving entire communities in harnessing local intelligence and resources, connecting them with national and international knowledge, capital and markets.
Among other inclusive development projects, PASO built 22 rural alternative schools in regions most impacted by the conflict. Participants include ex-combatants, peasant farmers, Venezuelan migrants, farmers seeking a transition from dependency on illicit crops and others who are often marginalized in Colombian society.
“One of the things PASO has shown me is that inclusion isn't a ‘nice to have’ when you are doing the work of rebuilding the fabric of society,” said Oscar Varona (MBA ‘11), who has volunteered thousands of hours as an alumni advisor supporting Frontlines student teams since 2020. “It is absolutely a necessary condition to the work being successful.”
Traditional organizations aiming to help ex-combatants reincorporate into society have primarily focused on education and workforce training — only to discover that the stigma still blocks participants from job opportunities and entrepreneurs from accessing buyers and markets.
“What makes PASO special is that they really think about inclusion in a different way,” said Varona. “It was about going beyond skillbuilding and integrating them into society through participation in societal decisions.”
María del Pilar Gómez, PASO program manager, explained that the key to PASO’s success is thinking about the community as participants versus beneficiaries. “PASO and communities co-create projects together, which creates a greater sense of community ownership and empowerment.”
“It’s about building trust. Trust building requires inclusion to be big and broad. This is the only way to have an impact,” said Fernando Cruz, one of PASO’s leaders.
“Inclusion allows you to discover entrepreneurs that, in many societies, are simply lost,” explained PASO’s executive director, Juan Fernando Lucio. “One of the problems with entrepreneurship, and with business, is the high rate of failure of early businesses. Through continued support, we absorb the risk that allows the entrepreneur to educate himself better to bring the business to sustainability.”
PASO recognizes that the people they are working with are already talented and resourceful business people. They may be building early-stage, informal businesses, but “they manage to survive in places where businesses, in theory, do not thrive. Never underestimate what they've already achieved.”
At the rural alternative school in Fonseca, for instance, a group of ex-combatants established a project to raise laying hens. The business has expanded dramatically. Today, the entrepreneurs aim to maintain 8,000 hens and are producing nearly 2 million eggs annually.
If this were a traditional, private business, the employer would likely seek to automate the work, pocket the savings and move out of the region, said Lucio. In contrast, the PASO project is creating an entire sector of employment for the community.
Another project, a farmers market cooperative called COOMFASOL, was created by women whose families have transitioned away from growing coca to other crops. When the project began, the women “were leaders in the political arena but not business leaders,” said Lucio. “Little by little, these ladies have shown their ability to coordinate large areas and 1,250 families.”
“Business is about vision. This vision has been created locally. It wasn’t PASO's vision. It is a local aspiration that resulted from the accumulation of little successes.”
Through Frontlines’ work with COOMFASOL, we can see the transformation of the entrepreneurs. As the cooperative grows, the women are on their way to becoming the food basket for the neighboring region. It’s worth noting that this aspiration comes from the local community itself.
“Business is about vision,” said Lucio. “So now these people have a vision. This vision has been created locally. It wasn’t PASO's vision. It is a local aspiration that resulted from the accumulation of little successes.”
When trying to include historically marginalized groups, Varona said that instead of simply setting quotas, the right question to ask is: “How do we make sure that they're involved in the process, so that our community and society is made more whole by their reintroduction into it?”
Varona learned some of these same lessons as an MBA student in Business on the Frontlines, studying rural water wells in Uganda. His team learned that nearly half of the wells that had initially been built by well-meaning foreign groups no longer functioned. “We as a team asked ourselves, why is this happening? And one of the things we discovered was that the community wasn't ever really included in that process.” Since community members had not been included in placing and building the wells, they didn’t have the tools and information to fix them and the broken wells languished.
True inclusion involves putting in the time. The inclusion work of PASO is about walking alongside, accompanying communities in uncovering new opportunities and bringing their dreams to life.