The Strength to Rebuild: The Importance of a Productive Value Chain for Women Victims of the Armed Conflict in Rivera, Huila

This document presents the preliminary results of a solidarity-based interven-tion carried out during the 2024–2025 period with a group of 20 women victims of the armed conflict in the municipality of Rivera, Huila, Colombia. The initia-tive was led by the CONATO research seedbed of the Business Administration program at ECACEN and articulated with the Territorial CIPAS. Its main pur-pose was to strengthen the productive, organizational, and entrepreneurial capacities of the participants through the consolidation of a tourism value chain with a focus on territorial development, symbolic reparation, and wo-men’s empowerment.

The research was developed under a qualitative and participatory approach that integrated active listening spaces, recovery of historical memory, partici-patory diagnosis of productive capacities, and technical training processes in areas such as cost structures, brand identity, business models, and access to funding sources. This process made it possible to identify the main productive lines present within the group, including traditional gastronomy, handicrafts, rural tourism, agroecological production, specialty coffee, food processing, and wellness tourism routes.

The findings show that strengthening administrative and commercial skills is a priority need for most participants, as well as the interest in articulating their initiatives around a community-based tourism value chain. Likewise, spaces for dialogue and recognition of shared experiences significantly contributed to emotional strengthening, self-esteem, and the reconstruction of social ties among the participants.

The training process enabled the women to advance in the structuring of busi-ness proposals, the definition of brand identity, and the exploration of funding opportunities, particularly through the Fondo Emprender program. In this context, associativity and academic support emerge as key factors for the sus-tainability of these ventures and for the generation of economic opportunities.