We are very happy to announce that we have started a collaboration with TNC (The Nature Conservancy). TNC is an American NGO working in 79 countries, with the mission of conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Their vision is a world where the diversity of life thrives, and people act to conserve nature for its own sake and its ability to fulfill our needs and enrich our lives.
Together with “TNC” and local NGO “ACAX”, we are initiating the construction of the “Community Center Reconectar”: A safe-place for Guatemalan youth, to learn and teach, share and co-create the world they want to live in.
Reconectar, is an intercultural center that promotes a holistic life-style, based in inner-change as one of the main tools to create positive changes towards the social, economic and environmental crisis we face in Guatemala (and the planet). A self-sufficient center, based in Permacultural Design and Agroecology, with the aim to answer the following questions: How do we create highly productive spaces, to obtain high quality-organic food in small areas, without the use of agrochemicals and without generating pollution? How do we create healthier, tastier, healing-food, while supporting the regeneration of our community and our planet? How do we heal ourselves, while healing nature? How do we find sustainable life-styles that fulfill our needs, the needs of our community and our planet, while diminishing our environmental food-print?
We are creating and edible forest-garden, a highly-productive space that imitates a natural forest ecosystem. This design will produce high-quality food to support the nutrition and economy of families living in poverty, whilst contributing to mitigate climate change, promote water conservation, prevent erosion, restore the soil´s natural-biota, create a shelter for bees and pollinator species, whilst supporting local economy and promoting the education of community leaders and youth.
In Reconectar, we will have a vegetable garden, surrounded by fruit-trees, productive ponds with a hydroponic system with fishes, a chicken house with a rain-water harvesting system and many chickens that will produce nutritious eggs, while helping us keep our garden free of plagues and fertilize it. We will integrate a composting area, to make high-quality compost from different sources (like red worms, etc). and a communal recycling station.
We will also have an amazing geodesic dome made of bamboo, this will be our workshop area: the education space for the after-school program and extracurricular activities, as yoga and meditation lessons. The geodesic dome will have ecological toilets that create compost out of human-waste. We will also integrate a cozy library, as part of our after school-program, we will create a space where kids can study (as many of them don’t have a space to study after-school and none of them own a computer with internet).
A small preventive-health center, focused on kids nutrition will be created, to fight against malnutrition (one of the biggest health problems in Guatemalan youth). In this space we will integrate the use of medicine plants from our garden, to strengthen kid’s health and to teach them natural, low-cost, and efficient recipes to have a healthy-body. We will develop this project with the support of nutritionists, students and interns from Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala and Universidad Rafael Landivar (national universities).
In a future we will also add a Natural Health Center, where we will work with a cooperative of single-mother to create health and beauty products made out of the medicine plants from our garden. We will also work along local organizations, to become a seed-bank, one of the few places in Guatemala to preserve non-transgenic, native seeds. And be able to provide healthy, free seeds, to local farmers.
And last (but not least) will be the equine-therapy area, where we will be able to provide free horse assisted therapies to boys and girls that suffer from domestic-violence, among other traumas.
We will be able to sell eggs, organic and delicious vegetables, fish, high-quality compost, medicine and ornamental plants, natural-organic health and beauty products and provide Permaculture workshops, to self-sustain the Community Center.
This is a pilot project that will help us understand the best path towards the creation of more successful Community Centers in Guatemalan communities.
We are very much looking forward to working with TNC and are very thankful for them choosing to work with us in Guatemala.
