With last year’s donations, a 4.5 hectare piece of land has been purchased in Cayambe, where alstroemerias and roses will soon be growing. With their first Forever Flowers initiative, the non-profit organization The Santiago Partnership was able to raise $110,000 with the aim to support Ecuadorians, and now that the land has been purchased and greenhouses will be built soon, it is time to take the initiative a step further. “We are now extending our project into the community, in order to achieve our goal of creating self-sustainability,” says Joel Delp, Executive Director of The Santiago Partnership. 
The team
Benefiting from the success of flowers
The social project officially launched in 2014 in order to help bring about change and improvement in areas around Cayambe that have many social and medical struggles. So far, they have already constructed a children’s foster home, a medical clinic, and various community programs. Recently, for example, they started a program to assist women who are suffering from domestic violence. “We have been helping the community with social issues, but there is only so much difference such support can make when the issue of poverty remains. Therefore, our aim is to make the community more self-sustainable, which is why we decided to create a flower farm. As we all know, Ecuadorian roses are very successful worldwide, so we wanted to hop on what is already being produced in great quantities in the area. With the $110,000 we raised last year, we purchased the land and had enough financial resources to build greenhouses on the first half hectare.” 
The purchased land
Extending the flower business to the community
Last Friday, the new Forever Flowers 2 funding campaign started, which is going a step further by extending into the community. “With the $75,000 we are hoping to raise, we want to extend the flower business further to also benefit the members of the community. $25,000 will be used as a community catalyst. This money will be divided over five local farmers as loans to start their microfarms. They will get the technical expertise to grow flowers at the same quality as we will be doing, and then they can repay the loan through flowers, by growing them for us and providing us with higher quantities to export. This part of extending the business into the community has always been a part of the vision for the Flower Farm Social Enterprise, we just couldn't include it last year as the budget had gotten too high. The next $25,000 will be spent on constructing a business center, and the remaining money will go to commercialization and administration.”
The donation rewards
Donations
Currently, since November 19, $11,000 has already been raised. Eager to make a donation as well? Click here. All donations are tax-deductible for the United States taxes. “Additionally, you can give with confidence knowing our history and reputation that comes through on our high rating on Guidestar.com as well as our very low U.S. administrative costs of 6% in the years from 2013 through 2021 of operations.” The donor will be thanked through a specific reward for your donation.
For more information:
The Santiago Partnership
Email: info@santiagopartnership.org
https://foreverflowers2.causevox.com/