27 artisanal fish farmers trained in financial management and revolving funds. As part of the activities to strengthen the capacities of small-scale fish farmers through the Social Protection for Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture in Colombia (SocPro4Fish) project, the Marine and Coastal Research Institute (INVEMAR) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held two workshops in April this year on financial aspects and revolving funds.

The purpose of these workshops was to generate approaches with the fish farming associations Asociación de Productores Agropecuarios y Piscícolas del Ariari (ASPROAPIAR), in the municipality of El Dorado, Meta, and in the village of El Corozo, in Córdoba, which had the opportunity to learn about the functioning of the market, financial aspects such as budgets, cash flow and profitability; the functioning of revolving funds and project formulation.

These spaces also served to explain how these associations manage collective resources to support each other. These training sessions were attended by 8 members of ASPROAPIAR and 19 members of ASOPROAVECOR. These themes were selected by the associations themselves, which, through a self-diagnosis, identified their shortcomings in each of these areas.

The aim of these trainings is to gather inputs to identify gaps and opportunities from the local communities that carry out aquaculture activities, in order to raise them in the territorial roundtables of the Inter-institutional Group for Fisheries and Aquaculture - GIPRO - installed in each department, and in the next National GIPRO, to be held on 9 May 2023.