The multi-stakeholder platform ‘Yakunchik’, after the Quechua word for ‘our water’, was established at the end of 1998 in the city of Huamanga, the capital city of the Department of Ayacucho located in the central highlands of Perú, when the region experienced the effects of a severe drought caused by El Niño (EN 98). A workshop on water management which was held in Huamanga at the end of that year brought together a small cluster of concerned local institutions which would later give rise to the platform.