Glendy Andy
Founder of Ally Guayusa, Ecuador
Seeds for the Future
When Glenda Andy thinks of the Ally Guayusa Association, she sees young people at the center of its future. They are still few in number, but they are essential: they handle WhatsApp coordination, record production data, manage social media, and support the association’s accounting and administrative work. Not long ago, none of this existed. “Before, young people finished high school and left—to Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca,” Glenda recalls. Assemblies grew older, and the future seemed to be leaving the territory.
Her determination to reverse this trend came from her own experience. Years earlier, her community organized a year-long training program for youth. Thirty young people began; many dropped out, but a committed group stayed. They learned leadership, fieldwork, administration, and marketing. For Glenda, the training wasn’t just technical—it was preparation for something bigger: the creation of the region’s first Kichwa enterprise. That vision materialized with the formalization of Ally Guayusa in 2018.
Once established, the association doubled down on youth participation. Not only do young people bring digital knowledge and new perspectives, but they are also the ones who will eventually manage the association. So they were deliberately integrated into daily operations.
Today, Ally Guayusa’s youth manage the website, social networks, and publications. They assist elders in workshops, help complete technical sheets, and ensure accurate records. In the territory’s internal communication, they are indispensable: a message sent to the youth spreads quickly to parents, facilitating assemblies, mingas, and training sessions across large distances.
The transformation is visible in their confidence. “Before, they spoke with fear; they had neither voice nor vote,” Glenda says. Training—supported by organizations such as NESsT—has turned them into active participants who can present projects, speak at fairs, and explain processes to visiting institutions.
For Glenda, supporting youth is also deeply personal. When she began participating in courses and workshops, her partner resisted, complaining she wasn’t “a woman of the house.” He eventually left. The rupture was painful, but she transformed it into strength. “If someone leaves me because they don’t love me, I will work and I will show what I can do,” she says. She raised her six children alone, financed the higher education of three of them, and still dreams that at least one will return to work at the association.
At home, as in the organization, she leads by example. She talks to her children daily, offers affection and advice, and reminds them that she herself is proof of what is possible. “I’ve always told them: I am the mirror for you.”
When she imagines the future, she sees two intertwined paths: the strengthening of Ally Guayusa and the flourishing of her children and other young people in the community. She dreams that the young people of the community, not just her own, will take up the baton. In the meantime, she continues to open the way for them and generate the conditions for them to find in their own territory a place to stay, participate, and lead.