Working in remote areas of Colombia, Aso Manos Negra’s work to support community land rights can be challenging. Most of the communities they support have limited to no electrical power supply, cell phone or internet coverage. Additionally, they confront low levels of computer literacy among community members.
Aso is comprised of female community leaders from the communities that they work with. And despite having limited resources and contact with each other, the group has managed to collect a large amount of land and resource rights information to protect the environment from illegal mining and deforestation while supporting communities to apply for land titularizacion and generate income through sustainable activities linked to tourism, handicraft art, and agriculture.
Due to the lack of connectivity and technological infrastructure, and computer literacy, Aso has been documenting their land and resource rights data on paper. Looking to digitize, organize, and share this information, they reached out to Cadasta. Cadasta worked with Aso to create a customized data collection solution and provide in-person training to teach the group’s members how to collect data on women’s economic activities and land use and track the formalization process of community lands.
Following their short in-person training with Cadasta, the group has been using Cadasta’s tools to geolocate community boundaries, track land titularization processes, survey women community associations, and document women’s economic activities that are environmentally sustainable. To date, Aso Manos Negra was able to successfully document over 5,200 households in 17 communities across the Pacific region.