Project - Horticulture

From September 2012 to August 2013 (I am embarrassingly behind on writing blogs), I co-taught organic agriculture classes as one of my main activities. It was quite a learning experience for me, as it is the first opportunity I have had to participate in formal education. We had four sections, each of which came to the school farm for two hours each week. For each section, we selected a project appropriate to the knowledge level of the students. One of these projects was horticulture, or vegetable production.

Some of my students planting seeds in a freshly made bed.

Solar Food Preservation

I briefly mentioned my solar dehydrator project in a previous post. Now that this project has been wrapped up, here's a little more detail.

Having lived most of my life in temperate climates, I'm used to the idea of seasonal fruits and veggies, and the need to preserve produce in order to have something tasty to eat in the winter. Sure, NAFTA eliminates some of that need, but preserving food is still an important part of American culture.

During the first few months in Ecuador, I quickly realized that food preservation is very rare here. Before refrigeration was widely available, meat and fish were smoked or dried to extend the bounty of a hunt for up to a month. Now, even if a family doesn't own a fridge, the store down the street that sells chicken probably does. So few people preserve meat anymore.

Although food preservation isn't common, there are some products that need to be dried as part of the processing. Cacao, coffee, and plantain (for grinding into flour) are the most common.

At the school farm, the teachers were experimenting with designs to accelerate the drying of cacao and improve the quality (mold and flies are very common when sun-drying cacao).

Version 1.0 of the solar dehydrator.

The first design they came up with had a lot of good qualities:
-Made from recycled/free materials
-Improved airflow below cacao compared with sun-drying on a tarp
-Easy to use

Water Conservation Education

One of the main projects I worked on from about November through February was teaching environmental education to preschool through sixth graders at the Spanish/Kichwa bilingual school in town (ages 4 through 13ish). We had ten lessons that focused mainly on water: where does it come from, who uses it, why it's important, and how we can conserve it.

Some of my students. TOTALLY paying attention to what I'm saying...

Foto Friday: Recycled Art Workshop

Last week Isaac took two teenagers from Santa Clara to the Peace Corps training center in Tumbaco for a recycled art workshop. We learned how to make many things functional and beautiful using mainly recycled materials.

Leticia with her new purse (made from a blown innertube) and Leandro.

Leandro and Leticia would like to work with us to organize a youth group in Santa Clara.

English Club 2012-2013

Peace Corps volunteers often talk about "primary" projects and "secondary" projects. Since we're in the Natural Resources Conservation program here in Ecuador, our primary projects focus on the environment and conservation, like our dry toilets project. Secondary projects include activities that Peace Corps volunteers are involved in that don't fit into the main focus of their program. Like many volunteers, we've had a lot of requests for English classes, tutoring, clubs, homework help, and how to otherwise magically transport knowledge of the English language into one's brain.

Helping community members learn English is a great way to become integrated into the community, especially when you've first been plopped into it after training. Unfortunately, most people, after those first few meetings, get tired, freak out, or (for whatever reason) give up--because learning a new language is HARD.

But that's why I put so much effort into my English club.

Practicing pronunciation.

Dry Toilets Project

We finally have finished our dry toilets project! This project was started literally the first weekend we were in Santa Clara and it is an enormous relief to have finished it.

Community members in Cueva de los Tayos posing with their school's new dry toilet.

English Club to Angel Robes

Living in Ecuador can be a slippery slope of getting volunteered for things...

Project: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

We'd like to introduce our first Peace Corps project blog! Our project blogs will showcase a project that we have completed in our community as a part of our Peace Corps service.


Vacation Course: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

This project, which translates as "Learning about Nature through English," was a suggestion by one of our community counterparts. He originally asked for an English course for the high school students to attend during their two-month vacation from school, but our project area is Natural Resources Conservation (NRC). So we decided to teach both English and environmental education.