Our branch campus in Cuenca held a closing ceremony for its community engagement project aimed at helping people from the community of "El Valle" market their agro ecological products. The project was carried out by business administration students and professors with the support of representatives from the autonomous decentralized government of "El Valle", the Ministry of Agriculture and members of 8 associations from this rural community.

It was a 6-month long project where students carried out the following activities:

- Analyze of the associations' current situation regarding the commercialization of agro ecological products

- Identify the profile of the current and potential market 

- Identify the features of the product, suggest a brand

- Proposal to improve the current market (fairs)

- Present a project to increase production, sales and use other distribution channels

The project was carried out with the participation of members of each association, through the application of qualitative research techniques, several alternatives were evaluated for the solution of the main problems and to generate a project proposal for each association and one overall project that provides new market opportunities and the improvement of the products' position in the market.

UPS president, Father Javier Herrán, spoke about the importance of developing and continuously working on these projects to strengthen university-society links, contribute to the solution of environmental problems and strengthen the encounter between students and reality that surrounds them, thereby consolidating the evolution of the teaching-learning process.