Sacred Valley Community Reserve Project

We are building a network of communities in the Sacred Valley of Peru to ensure benefits from the tourism industry to all the citizens of each village. I am the President of the community of Cacchiccata, and I have received funding from the World Bank to build a botanical park and community reserve in my community. We have constructed a campsite on the outskirts of the town with full facilities for tourists, and we are managing and controlling the tourist traffic here to ensure community benefits and to stop the destruction of our sacred sites. We are using profits from the industry to construct and repair schools in each community, as the government has been closing several of them due to lack of resources and infrastructure.

Tourist traffic has increased dramatically with the growing popularity of Macchu Picchu. Our town, and the towns we are working with, lie between Cusco and Macchu Picchu, such that the millions of visitors that travel there each year must pass through our villages. This creates great opportunities for our communities to benefit from the industry, but also creates huge problems with the preservation of Inca sites and our culture and traditions. This project will work to ensure that the traffic is controlled and managed not by travel agencies, but by the leaders and citizens of each community.