Katherine and Kate, Founders of Puente, on a community visit in their new role as US Board Members. Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health: Puente) was co-founded in 2003 by Kate Seely and Katherine Lorenz, two young American women who came to Oaxaca as volunteers and became fascinated by amaranth’s nutritional and economic values as well as its importance in the local culture. Working together with other local organizations and public health authorities, it was agreed that amaranth could be a valuable part of the solution for Oaxaca’s disproportionately high rates of malnutrition. Today, Puente is officially recognized as U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity and as an official Mexican Asociación Civil (with nonprofit status). Since 2003, Puente’s team has facilitated dynamic workshops to more than 6.000 women to reintroduce the regular consumption of amaranth into their families’ diets aimed at combating the disproportionate malnutrition rates amongst Oaxaca’s indigenous population.
In 2007, Puente incorporated an amaranth farming program, and with it a more sustainable approach to food sovereignty that includes nutritional, agricultural and income generating objectives. This innovation has allowed Puente and our participant communities to envision amaranth not only as a nutritional source of food but also as a long term development solution. Since that date, Puente has highly qualified agro-ecologists on our staff who have trained over 415 farmers about the production of amaranth using ecological and organic practices. Puente has also strengthened the capacity of 530 community development workers from eleven local organizations to incorporate amaranth into their program strategies and replicate our model with their own target populations.
Today, Puente a la Salud Comunitaria has two core programs which run side by side: Healthy Families, which focuses on the diffusion of information about amaranth, the education of mothers and improving malnourishment amongst young children and Eco-Amaranth, which focuses on training local subsistence farmers to produce amaranth- both to provide a more varied diet for their families and to generate income. Through these two programs, Puente recognizes the interdependence of productive farming and good nutrition in rural, subsistence communities. By promoting a higher nutrient, organically grown staple crop, not only does the program impact the nutritional well being of these communities, but also aims to drive income generation, and thus lead to community sustainability and the protection of traditional ways of life.
Puente believes that the sustainable access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food is a basic human right. By working in the communities to re-introduce amaranth consumption and production, we are offering Oaxacan families a culturally appropriate opportunity to determine their own future.