March 2012-March 2014
Waste management in Panamá has been the primary focus of my
work during my Peace Corps service, however I have been lucky enough to
dedicate my time to a number of other secondary projects such as teacher
training, environmental classes, computer classes for children and adults,
building capacity for ecotourism businesses, constructing eco-stoves, promoting
organic agriculture, youth mentorship, and HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
Working in the Schools
One of my primary assignments as
community environmental conservation volunteers is to help train the primary
school teachers to incorporate dynamic teaching methods and environmental
themes into their lessons. To do
this I developed an environmental curriculums for pre-kinder through sixth
grade, held class planning sessions with the teachers, and encouraged them to
co-teach my classes. The
environmental themes that we touched on ranged from protecting plants and
animals, to waste management and resource management, to weather and climate
change. There were certain
teachers that were very engaged and were happy try new teaching methods, and
there are other teachers that are more stuck in their ways and would prefer it
sit in the back of the class and grade papers. In addition to environmental classes I helped to teach the
teachers English and developed a curriculum for computer classes. I taught computer classes for
kindergarten through sixth grade, and weekend classes for teens and adults.
Sustainable Harvest
The majority of people in the
community make their living through agriculture. By the end of the first year I realized there were number of
people in the community who had not been directly impacted by any of the
projects that I was involved in within the community. Around the same time I heard about a NGO in called Cosecha Sostenible Internacional (Sustainable Harvest International), which was started
by a former Peace Corps Panamá volunteer and is active in my province,
Coclé. As I learned more about the
organization, I decided that Piedras Gordas would be a perfect partner for the Cosecha Sostenible and their development
model, and could be a great benefit to the farmers in the community. After few initial meetings between my
community members, Cosecha Sostenible’s
staff and myself, we decide to invite the NGO to come and work in the community
and they committed to being active in Piedras Gordas for the next five
years. I have gone around
introducing Cosecha Sostenible staff
to families that I believe would be interested in, and benefit from,
participating in their program.
Over the next five years a agricultural
technician from Cosecha Sostenible
will live in the community to work with over 30 families to promote organic
agriculture and permaculture, hold organic agriculture workshops and seminars,
help farmers diversify their farms’ production, increase yields and gain access
to new markets, and allow community members to participate in information and
cultural exchanges with international volunteers.
Ecotourism
In Piedras
Gordas, just like in many of the rural areas of Panamá, young adults often
migrate to the cities to find more diverse job opportunities. To help combat this trend many citizens
in Piedras Gordas are interested in creating new economic opportunities by
attracting tourism to the area. I
have been working with a few members of the community to build ecotourism
capacity in Piedras Gordas with the goal of spurring job creation and creatind
an economic incentive for responsible environmental stewardship. As part of this effort I co-wrote a
grant and designed sessions for an ecotourism seminar.
My friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer
Felipe Jolles has a blog post about the seminar that is worth checking out:
To help
promote tourism in Piedras Gordas I organized meetings with community members
that are interested in ecotourism development. We identified various attractions in the community and
created a plan for tourism logistics.
With this information made webpage on the ecotourism website Keteka.com
to help attract tourist to the community.
Organic Agriculture
There is a
very innovative farmer in the community, “Beto,” who has built a very
impressive organic farm in Piedras Gordas. He is the most innovative farmer I have met since living in
Panamá, every time I come to his farm he is working on a new project. The last time I was there he had pigs
that he was using to help generate organic fertilizers, worm composting boxes,
rice paddies that were being fertilized by talipia living in the paddies,
orange and mango trees that he was grafting, homemade organic fertilizers,
pesticides and herbacides for sale, numerous vegetable, fruit and ornimental
plants, and over 100,000 oranges that were ready to harvest.
We believe
that his farm has the potential to be a large agro-tourism and organic
agrictulture training destination.
I have been working with Beto to build terraces for organic gardens,
build trails that provide easy access to his farm, and bring groups of
Panamanian and international tourists to his farm. Beto’s knowledge of organic agriculture is abundant but he
is lacking in some of the business skills that will allow for his farm to reach
it’s full economic potenial. To
help Beto improve his capacity to build the farm into a thriving business I
have been working with Beto to improve his accounting skills and promote his
farm throughout the area.
Magic Circle
Each school
day some of the students parents cook school lunches for the students. To help provide healthy ingredients for
the school lunches and a create an environmental sound way to dispose of the
organic waste, two fathers and I built a “magic circle” next to the school
kitchen. A “magic circle” is
essentially a 2 ft. x 2 ft. hole that can be filled with organic waste, and
that has a range of edible plants planted in high density around the
circle/hole. The circle/hole is “magic” because the organic waste thrown into
the circle provides organic fertilizer for the plants growing around the circle,
and in a short time it will produce healthy food with very minimal upkeep. At
the school we built the “magic circle” near a an existing orange tree and then
planted plantains, yucca, atoe (a root vegetable), beans, and peppers. As a result the parents cooking school
lunches can easily dispose of organic waste (without burning it), the lunches include
a large variety of healthy ingredients, and members of the community have
noticed the large yields that organic agriculture can produce.
Tower Stoves
Deforestation is a major concern
for residents in the area. Wood
burning stoves “fogons” are the
primary tools used to prepare food in my community members’ homes. The
traditional fogon is made of three
large stones used to hold a cooking pot, with burning wood placed between the
stones. Food cooked in this manner always has a great smoky flavor and is
part of the culture of Panamá (and many countries in the developing world), but
unfortunately these types of fogons
are inefficient, lead to further deforestation and can create health problems
due to smoke inhalation. In an effort preserve wood burning stoves while
eliminating the negative impacts that these fogons
create environmental engineers have developed various models of wood burning
“eco-stoves.”
Early on in my service I visited a
Peace Corps volunteer, John Doyle, who had developed an eco-stove model called
the “Tower Stove.” The Tower Stove
is great because it’s an appropriate technology that can be built with *free*
local materials (horse manure, clay heavy dirt [dirt from anthills works very
well], and dried grass) and it uses 75% less wood, produces 75% less smoke, and
cooks the food 50% faster than a traditional fogon. John taught me
how to build “Tower Stoves,” and I received a very small grant (I wrote a grant
proposal for $60 and was awarded $35) to buy materials to make Tower Stove brick
molds. Once I had the molds I
built a test stove at my home, which turned out to be functional but far from
beautiful. After construction tips
from my neighbors, I was able to help four community members build their own
stoves. We built a stove on Beto’s
farm, which has allowed him to cook meals for visitors and has helped promote
Tower Stoves use in the area.
HOW TO MAKE A TOWER STOVE
HIV/AIDS Awareness and Youth Development
Over the
past two years I’ve had the opportunity to participate in various activities
with the Peace Corps Panamá Gender and Development (GAD) organization. GAD focuses on topics such as youth leadership,
women empowerment, HIV/AIDS awareness and coordinates with the Special Olympics
to hold events throughout the country.
I’ve been a counselor at four Youth Leadership Camps (I’ve written a
posts about these camps previously), in which I lead sessions on decision
making, self image, self esteem, goal setting, teen pregnancy, and STD and
HIV/AIDS awareness. I’ve been able to volunteer at Special
Olympics basketball, track and field and soccer tournaments. In the past year I’ve focused my GAD
related work on holding HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention activities. For World AIDS Day I facilitated a
session for the community’s Tele
Educativa (afternoon school for adults working towards their high school
diploma), that taught over 80 adults from 6 surrounding communities what
HIV/AIDS is, it’s transmitted, protecting oneself from STDs and proper condoms
use. After taking my host brother,
Tito, to one of the GAD Youth Leadership camps, he decided that he wanted to
share what he had learned with other young adults in the community. So Tito and I held a workshop for the
Piedras Gordas’ soccer team and other youths in the community on preventing
unwanted pregnancy, preventing STD transmission and developing healthy romantic
relationships. Working with GAD
has been one of my most rewarding activities as a Peace Corps volunteer, and
has shown me that focusing on youth leadship is one of the keys to having a
society reach it’s full potential.
The last, but certainly not least, area in which I
have focused my time as a volunteer has been teaching my host sister Yarineth
English. For the past two years
she and I have had weekly English classes. I’ve seen a large improvment in her English comprehension and
ability to converse. I’m hoping
that our classes will help her reach her goal of finding employment as an
English speaking eco-tourism guide.
Not only have I enjoyed teaching her, but the time that we spend
together has allowed us to develop a very strong and meaningful friendship.
Comments
Post a Comment