¿Y Entonces...?

When I was visiting Jalapa during my initial site visit, I was able to meet one of the local NGO's and private clinic, ProFamilia, that was built with help from USAID after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. I also went to the maternity house and was sad to learn that their funding is less than sufficient and their budget from the previous year was cut more than half. There are 8 beds in the house and one of the agriculture volunteers from El Carbón wants to donate a pig to the house so that they can raise and sell it to profit the house for future expectant mothers. I noticed that there was land that could be used and I asked if they ever thought about building a garden and grow their own vegetables, because the only food provided is: rice, beans, and sugar (not much for a hearty diet for an expecting mother). There are no security fences around the house and animals come and go as they please, therefore a garden wouldn't be able to survive. The women of the house have to pool money together in order to buy meat and cook meals.

Since then, my colega and I have met with other players from the community, including the head of the Casa de Adolescencia and a representative from the Friendship City Project/Pueblos Unidos...aka an organization that is based out of BOULDER, COLORADO (I was fortunate enough to meet one of the representatives from Boulder while I was here during my site visit and look forward to his return in the future to work on health projects together).

The few of us put our heads together and after a few meetings, we have broken ground on some huertos (vegetable gardens). ProFamilia has provided us with secured land: their back area is fenced in and they have a security guard for the clinic 24 hours a day. FCP's representative has built huertos in the past in her community, as well as with her NGO, and has taken the lead in showing the jóvenes what to do. Our main workers are teenagers from the youth group as well as an ecology class from the high school, to receive credit. In a little over two weeks, we have successfully created 5 large plots and 20 smaller plots and seeded: tomatoes, cucumber, onions, peppers, carrots, as well as some local vegetables such as pipian.

Each time we work for about 2 hours and have about 10-20 teens come to work. It's a big number of people for not a lot of work, so I am going to start breaking them up into groups and delivering a charla to half of the group while the other half gardens, and switch them out after about 30-45 minutes.

We are still in the beginning phases of the project, but we are having success with what we have to work with! If you'd like to see pictures of what we have so far, I have created a slideshow of the progress we are making. Click HERE to see it!