Hampina Program Lead

The Hampina Program Lead is the role that holds the HWSY — Hampina Wasi Sacha Yachay (Middle Sister) program — maintaining living relationships with language carriers across the 4,000+ Indigenous languages HWSY honors, with particular relational depth around Quechua/Kichwa wisdom keepers, and negotiating source-community protocol agreements. Status: in development. Count: 1. Languages: EN / ES.

What this role holds

The Hampina Program Lead is the relational anchor for HWSY — Hampina Wasi Sacha Yachay's core purpose: honoring knowledge carried by more than 4,000 living Indigenous languages. This work centers on:

Language-carrier relationships — cultivating and sustaining ongoing relationships with language carriers, especially Quechua/Kichwa wisdom keepers.
Source-community protocol agreements — negotiating and maintaining agreements that govern how HWSY engages with, represents, and shares knowledge from source communities.
Program materials translation — coordinating translation in a way that remains accountable to source communities.

Why this role cannot be scaled or delegated

The work of the Hampina Program Lead cannot be delegated to AI and cannot be efficiently scaled. Per the Office's operational notes: "it is the work." The relationships themselves — with language carriers, elders, and source communities — constitute the program. Protocol agreements rest on trust built through ongoing relationship, not on systems or procedures that can be transferred to a tool or process.

Registry entries

The Hampina Program Lead holds or relates to the following operational registry entries:

language-carrier-relationships
source-community-protocol-agreements
program-materials-translation
sacha-taxonomy-elder-convening (in development)
yachay-taxonomy-convening (in development)

Kichwa schema relation

Within the Wasi, Sacha, and the Kichwa Ecological Role Schema, the Hampina Program Lead can serve in a Minga facilitator function — convening time-bounded working bands that research and take direct action on community needs after a Rimanakuy reaches consensus. See Rimanakuy and Minga for how Minga forms, operates, and dissolves.

Open question

Whether a single Hampina Program Lead (focused on HWSY — Hampina Wasi Sacha Yachay) is sufficient, or whether a dedicated Program Lead is also needed for each of the other Sisters — CoALA and the Hampina Path (Eldest) and Center for Decolonial Reparatory Research (CDRR) (Youngest) — is an open question for the Vision Keeper and Office stewards.

For Quechua/Kichwa terminology referenced in this role, see Glossary — Quechua-Kichwa and Office Terms.