The picture: A simple clay heart that my friend Laura (an Artcorps volunteer also working at FUNDAHMER) made. I thought it was a beautiful picture that I wanted to share... but I also liked how she just found some clay (which on first sight appeared to be mixed with dirt and rocks, but happens to be very good clay - Laura knows, she does a lot of clay artwork) on a trail we were exploring in a community in Morazan and within a few minutes she had turned it into something quite pretty. We left it in the stream, placed as it is in the photo. And Laura is working on a proposal to use clay in a community project next year...
So now that I have filled everyone in on what I have been doing, I thought it was time to update on what I am doing now!
After being here for 3 months (I just got back from Mexico - my first trip out of the country to renew my Visa, which I must do every 90 days!), I still feel like I am figuring out what happens when I push one button instead of the other (if that analogy makes sense... to put it another way, I still feel like a pilot on his second or third day in the plane, looking at all those buttons and just going "what the heck do all these do??? I have the on/off and a few others figured out, but the rest...?") However, I do feel like I have learned A LOT. It has been really interesting visiting other projects, getting ideas, seeing things I don't like, talking with other producers and hearing their stories...
One thing I have seen in a lot of projects is a lack of commercialization. Non-profits, cooperatives, women's groups, etc. can produce some really high quality goods, but the products are going to ruin and the projects falling apart because nothing is selling and the people aren't seeing any profits from their hundreds of hours of labor. Thus, I want to produce and sell. I want to have a plan for markets before we start producing things.
At the same time I have also realized it's ridiculous to plant some organic crop with the sole
purpose of selling when the nutrition within the community itself is so poor. You wouldn't think the people are malnourished when you see them because most of the women are overweight. They aren't in lack of calories, but they are in need of nutrients. Sometimes for 2 or 3 days straight they won't eat anything but corn tortillas, rice and potatoes (and some random candy or potato chips!) - all starches with hardly any nutrients. Vegetables are not part of their diet and very few people know how to grow them. I think they crave nutrients and stuff themselves with tortillas and rice to try and satisfy their cravings...but i'm not a nutritionist!
Furthermore, even though I knew it beforehand, I am now realizing it more than ever that my original project idea/plan is more like a 5+ year plan. I still think that planting something in large quantities (basically planting a cash crop in addition to their basic corn and beans) as a cooperative and getting organic certification is a great idea, but I think that will take years and I think other things need to happen first. Hence, my new modified plan is a large community garden in the community. The plan has already been approved by Armando and Anita and we have presented it on two occasions to the community and are basically already starting!!
Within the cooperative (the community is actually already legally recognized as a cooperative!), there is communal land where the garden will be located, and it will focus primarily on vegetables, grains, and roots (based on nutritional content and caloric content). There will also be some fruit trees and a few other trees that can eventually be used for firewood, as well as a few herbs. The project/garden will consist of a series of workshops and technical visits where the community will be able to learn skills and techniques on the whole gardening and organic process! Workshops will include topics such as planning a garden (aka, looking at calories and nutrients and what crops grow well together...), natural insecticides, crop rotations, composts and fertilizers...etc., One part that I am also really excited about is that once the harvest starts we are going to bring in a nutritionist AND teach some cooking classes! The people can learn how to cook the new vegetables and flavor things with various herbs and spices instead of just oil and salt, as well as learn a little about the nutritional content of things and why nutrition is important! You think that people should already know this stuff, but we take a lot for granted...One example of what I want to do, a lot of the women are anemic and so we are going to plant spinach which has a lot of iron, but most people in the community have never eaten spinach - and they won't eat it unless they learn how to cook it and why they should eat it. There are several new types of vegetables that I want to plant for the community to try.
The skills learned in the community garden will hopefully be put to use in everyone's individual gardens, and then the harvest from the community garden will eventually be only used to sell and take to market, allowing for some extra income for the involved families.
The 5 "objectives" we wrote for the Organic Community Garden include:
1: Improve agricultural skills and knowledge within the families
2: Improve family nutrition
3: Aid in alleviating some of the food security issues
4: Create extra family income
5: Improve environmental conditions in the community
(Hoped for) Results:
1: Families will be trained with appropriate technology in organic gardening
2: Families will:
a) improve nutrition
b) improve income
c) reduce toxic chemical usage
Ok, I think that is it for now. Of course I am involved in several other little projects in the community but more on that later! I hope I didn't bore you too much
Me and Noemi, one of the little girls who frequently runs around the community sitting in my lap or holding my hand...
This is a picture from one of the communal work days of the women's committee for the chicken coop . Obviously you can see there are men working as well, and so yes, some husbands come out to help. I really like the communal work days... 
A beautiful sunset I saw one evening while I was walking back from a youth meeting at a nearby community called Las Mesas. I made the youth hang out with me and watch the sunset for so long that the community thought something had happened to us and sent men with machetes to come look for me... they are a little protective of their gringa :)
