Since 2012, MAPLE Chile has worked With Mapuche communities to help create a community-powered finance tool that fits their traditional values and culture.

MAPLE Chile works with Mapuche (Mapu = earth / che = people) communities in the southern region of Lake Budi, Teodoro Schmidt commune, seeking autonomous economic development in their ancestral lands. We share with our associates the belief that the solutions to such demands must be articulated directly by the communities themselves.

Since 2012 MAPLE Chile has assisted Mapuche communities in the formulation, implementation, and replication of models of autonomous microdevelopment, such as small community-owned banks, self-sustainable tree nurseries, and artisan management tools, with the objective of supporting their cultural identity, cohesion, and traditional leadership. For more information on the tools being co-implemented with our community partners, please see our Lake Budi´s project´s below.

The key to MAPLE Chile’s methodology is to offer our community partners long-term participative processes that are transparent and flexible, or, in other words, “Slow Development”, enabling partners to create teams through mutual learning, and develop capacities of holistic economic management that include the environment and cultural heritage and that manifest in the creation of tools for multi-dimensional self-development of the community monetary and non-monetary assets. By 2020, MAPLE Chile aims to develop a strategic association with organizations administered by Mapuche leaders and professionals to jointly provide assistance for indigenous self-development to more Mapuche-Lafkenche communities within the cultural and territorial context of Lake Budi.

Our Programs