Bottles on Bottles! Recycling Program Continues to Grow

The bottles continue to pour in! In a previous blog, I mentioned the recycling challenge we introduced during the last week of our summer camp, during which we collected 233 bottles in less than 3 days. Since this first challenge, the program has continued to develop and the lead PDs have made progress towards establishing a permanent environmental program focused on environmental education and sustainable development within our community. As part of this, we have adapted the previous Agricultural Program into a new Environmental Health Program. Recycling remains the first big focus of our new Environmental Health Program. We have continued to collect bottles and, with inspiration from the bottle school recently completed at the Guatemala site, we are planning to construct a rooftop greenhouse (made out of plastic bottles of course) with the help of our fall volunteer group from Vanderbilt.

Recycling charla 

Learning how to make the 'bottle cap curtain'

We also recently held a charla (chat) in the library about the benefits of recycling. Many neighborhood kids attended, some of whom brought bottles to contribute to the project. After the charla, we used tops from the collected bottles to begin making a "bottle top curtain" that will be used to separate a currently open doorway between one of our classrooms and the main area of the library.

While we are saving all of the uncrushed bottles for the future greenhouse, many of the bottles brought in are already crushed or flattened. Today, Cate and I took the first load of these bottles to the local recycling plant. The plant began an incentive a little over a year ago to pay a small amount for each kilo of bottles recycled. Our Ecuadorian friends have told us the incentive has been immensely successful, and as a result the streets are much cleaner. By providing a collection point in the community, we hope to promote a culture of recycling and act as an outlet for community members who want to recycle, but don't have the means to bring bottles to the plant themselves.

Local recycling center 

Carlos and I watching as they weigh our bottles 

It was somewhat of an odd experience, with a security guard who became very suspicious of Cate taking photos. Luckily we had our friend Carlos with us, who was an immense help! All in all we recycled 23 kilos, an estimated 800 bottles all together. After the bottles are recycled, the plastic is turned into fiber that is later used to make jeans. We will continue to collect bottles of all types and recycle those that are too damaged to be used in the construction of the greenhouse. Stay tuned for updates!

Adult Nutrition and Cooking (recipe included!)

As many of you know Adult Nutrition and Cooking is held every Saturday afternoon after English classes. The class focuses on introducing new recipes as well as providing healthy alternatives to classic Ecuadorian dishes. This year the course is being taught by the lovely Virginia and Claudia who started the class off by introducing typical dishes from their homes, including fish tacos (for Claudia's hometown of San Diego) and shrimp and grits (to represent Virginia's southern roots).

Virginia showing the class how to layer the pie 

Tomato Pie 

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of joining their class, to help cook, meet the wonderful participants, and eat some delicious food. The theme of the week was 'Alternatives to Wheat Flour' and Virginia introduced a tomato pie recipe with a bean flour crust (recipe below). After the food prep was finished, Claudia led a short charla about different types of flour including quinoa flour, coco flour and yuca flour, and their best uses. The pie was delicious and it was great to chat with different community members as we cooked and ate!

Enjoying the final product! 

Chefs/Profes Claudia and Virginia  

Pie de Tomate Receta

Relleno:

4 tomates (rebanado)

1 cebolla blanco (grande y picada)

1 taza albahaca

2 tazas de queso cheddar (rallado)

½ taza mayonesa

Preparación:

Primero, cocer la corteza vacía en el horno a 350 grados por 30 minutos o hasta la corteza esta doradas.  Segundo, cortar los tomates y la cebolla.  Saltear la cebolla.  En la corteza al horno, hacer capas del tomate, la cebolla, albahaca y queso rallado.  En cima del pie, poner la mayonesa y un poquito del queso rallado.  Cocer al horno el pie por 20 minutos mas o hasta el queso se derrita.

La Corteza:

2 tazas de harina

1 taza de mantequilla

1 cucharadita de sal

7 cucharaditas de agua

Corta la mantequilla en cubos.  Mezclar la mantequilla con la harina y sal.  Poco a poco, agregar el agua.  Amasar la masa hasta todo esta mezclado.  Rodar el plano de masa y ponerla en un molde de tarta.

New Children's Nutrition Site in Fajardo

We are excited to announce the expansion the our Children's Nutrition Program! In past year we have worked extensively with an elementary school in Chaupitena, however with recent changes to the school system here in Ecuador, Chaupitena has experienced a drastic increase in students and is currently struggling with disorganized and crowded classrooms. The lead PDs working in Children's Nutrition plan on continuing their work at Chaupitena once the school has become more organized. In the mean time the program has expanded to include a new class called "Nutrition and Wellbeing" which is now taught at a nearby high school in the Fajardo neighborhood. The course will focus on promoting an interest in and improving the knowledge of personal wellbeing with an emphasis on nutrition, preventative health and healthy lifestyles. The nutrition portion of the curriculum is modeled after the Harvard Health Eating Plate guidelines. Throughout the course students will learn about topics ranging from healthy grains to diabetes prevention to reproduction health rights. The high school also has a community garden, which will provide the prefect setting for our lessons on food production and resulting environmental impacts.

On the first day the students were given a diagnostic test on basic nutrition. The results indicated a great need for this type of education as only 2 of the 43 students present could name all 6 components of a healthy plate (many included yogurt and shrimp as two of the daily requirements) and only 12 out of 43 knew that eating fruit had different nutritional value than consuming fruit juice. When asked why, one student's response was, "because orange juice is not in an orange." Another slightly comical response from the day included a student saying that the healthiest milk is "milk from a carton." Interestingly enough many students stated that they prefer to eat home over eating at a restaurant because they know how the food was prepared and exactly what they will be eating. We will address these
misconceptions as well as many others throughout the upcoming semester.

Currently MPI is only working with the students at Fajardo every other Wednesday however given the results of the diagnostic test and the attentive nature of the students we hope to increase our presence in the classroom. We are very excited to be working with this new curriculum and group of students!

Clau in the Clouds

A blog post by our own Claudia Zaugg about her experience teaching English to the Ecuadorean Military:

A Day with the Military
Wednesday started at 5:30 AM with a 1.5-hour car-ride in a military-owned vehicle to a military base just north of Quito. Upon arrival, we were greeted with a camp-style breakfast and men dressed in uniform. Not to mention the soundtrack of gun-shots, airplanes, and Arabic prayers playing over the loud-speaker on repeat. For 7AM, we were all a little confused as I am sure whoever reading this is at this point. Let me backtrack a bit. El Valle de Los Chillos has a strong military presence since there is an Ecuadorean base nearby. Therefore, many of our students are active in the military or have family in the military. One of our English students came to us the other day asking for a favor –to help with the final English examination of the UN Peacekeepers. We weren’t exactly sure what this entailed, but myself, Cate, Heather, and Taylor agreed to the challenge. After our delicious breakfast, we were each given a piece of paper explaining the “situation” and our roles as workers for different NGOs. Our roles: mine to act as an official from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Cate from UNESCO, Heather from the UN World Food Program, and Taylor from Doctors without Borders. The situation: a rebel up rise and civil unrest somewhere in Africa causing many people to flee their homes and settle in refugee camps. In my case in particular, the UNHCR had supplies to deliver to the refugee camps but could not successfully deliver them without the security of UN soldiers. One-by-one, the UN Peacekeepers in training would approach my table and have 10 minutes to figure out what I needed from them and how they could fix the issue (all in English). Perhaps the hardest part of this whole role-playing situation was the fact that I was supposed to act mean in some situations, and over-friendly in others. In the words of the soldiers evaluating the UN Peacekeepers, “try to make the one girl cry and maybe flirt with some of the guys.” After the first few rounds, the evaluator at my table started laughing at my inability to act mean. After 2 hours of role-playing, it was time to watch how our 4 different stories would come together. We were taken to another building in the compound where a tall Canadian soldier greeted the 13 UN Peacekeepers. The Canadian started to grill them about what they learned about the situation and was not afraid to call bullshit on their stories. The 4 of us sat there, feeling bad for some of the Peacekeepers whose English was not up to par, and realizing how much information we had to make up to answer many of the questions they asked us (for example, some guy asked me for my radio station number, and I didn’t even know I had a radio, so I just said I didn’t have one. My evaluator cracked up at this one). Overall, the day was extremely eye opening and interesting. Although the situation was hypothetical, we felt pretty cool having such a responsibility in a largely official and important task. All the soldiers we met were overly nice, and have even offered us houses to stay in during our future travels in Ecuador.

Children's English Program

The third week of English continues to go smoothly as all classes finish up review and diving into new material! Here are some photos from Children's English this past week:

Students taking a quiz 

Profe Nico teaching intermediate children's english 

The students in intermediate learn the body parts in English, an excellent reason to sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

Students work on homework in the library 

Profe Taylor and her attentive students in advanced english

And So It Begins

In a poorly lit dining room in a big orange house in a middle class suburb of Sangolqui, Ecuador, seven American twenty-somethings sit in silence typing away frantically at seven illuminated Mac Book keyboards.  This can only mean one thing—classes at the Manna Project International Bibiloteca have finally commenced.  Surrounded by stacks and stacks of binders, books and teaching aids—the legacies passed down from our predecessors, the residents of the Manna house studiously press on through the misty jungle of lesson planning, a first for nearly everyone, as we prepare for our second week of classes.

Saturday evening was met with a sigh of relief after the first week of classes concluded, seemingly hitch-less.  Art class, all English level classes for both children and adults, as well as cooking and adult nutrition have now joined the ranks with our exercise classes as well as our small business development and preventative health programs which are already in full-swing.

In a diagnostic test given in Profe Abby’s class, an adult English student responded to the question “Where do you live?” with “I am play soccer.”  While probably true, a decidedly incorrect response. 

 All students have been very eager and willing to learn, though.  Having been inundated with inscriptions for English classes, and having three more PDs than last year, we found ourselves in a perfect storm of opportunity and were able to add another basic level adult English class, accommodating twenty more students who otherwise would have been wait-listed.

Our focus, however, has not strayed from our many other obligations here in Ecuador.  The small business development team is making inroads into involving our loan recipients in Jatampungo with our friends from De la Mata a la Olla as a possible new market for their organic produce.  The Preventative Health team soldiers on with their weekly diabetes club, continuing to find new and creative ways of teaching about living a healthy lifestyle with diabetes.  The PDs in charge of children’s nutrition are also finding new honey pots in which to stick their pedagogical hands into, starting up classes again in Chaupitena soon and hopefully as well at a new location in Fajardo. In other exciting news, Abby and Tari will kick off our group’s first live radio show this Friday. The topic will be Manna’s sponsorship of the acoustic concert Abby and Tari are organizing for Playing for Change, a global event where musicians broadcast their performances in the name of social change. 

West of Eden

Hello all!  So the troops and I have just returned from our first quarterly retreat in the remote town of Quilotoa.  As social chair I can safely say this first retreat went off without a hitch.  I say that because nobody fell off the cliff and nobody froze to death; a true victory in my social chair book.  I knew I wanted to have our first retreat in Quilotoa purely because of how infamously beautiful the Quilotoa crater lake supposedly was.  For those who don’t know, the lake to which I am referring (also pictured in the blog's banner photo) is a massive natural lake nestled in the crater of the most western active volcano in Ecuador, the result of a formerly massive now melted glacier.  The trek to the tiny town of Quilotoa, which is populated by only about thirty locals all of whom spoke primarily in Quichua, required the boarding of three buses and impeccable timing because there is but one bus that leaves daily to Quilotoa from the Latacunga terminal.  Needless to say, we made it and were greeted by two of the friendliest local women, donned in their finest indigenous garb, shouting my name, probably assuming that the foreign girl with the funny accent who made the reservation must be amongst the group of eleven gringos who stepped off of the only daily bus to Quilotoa that day.  The hostel was warm, welcoming and relaxing, the perfect setting for our first retreat’s group discussion about the cultural boundaries we had encountered thus far.  I like to think we all learned a little something about each other that night. 

The beauty of the lake also truly exceeded our expectations.  Due to a high concentration of dissolved minerals, the lake is a luminescent aquamarine color.  It is hard to fathom that something this spectacular could occur in nature, but it surely does.  Once we had all readjusted our now augmented realities of nature’s beauty and the bottomless well of Earth’s many mysteries, we trekked on.  The next day I had planned for us to hike from Quilotoa to Chugchilan, another small town on the Quilotoa “loop”, about 10km away.  The hike was to say the least…arduous, taking us along the crest of the volcanic crater, through forest and farm, across rivers and through canyons and probably pushed both our physical and mental boundaries a little more than I had anticipated.  However, operating with a no man left behind mentality, I successfully herded my flock to safety.  The second hostel in Chugchilan was a veritable paradise, complete with hot showers and cold beer.  Pleased with the day’s accomplishments we reveled in the bounties the hostel had to offer and in the personal achievement of a long day’s hike.  Bright and early the next morning, thumb high on the side of the road, we hitched a pick up truck back to Latacunga and started off for home.  It was a rewarding and memorable first retreat to say the least.

Now home, washed and feeling anew, we are all preparing with much anticipation to finally start the rest of our programs next week.  English classes, nutrition and cooking, and children’s art will all be underway by this time next week and the house is abuzz with lesson planning, strategy talks and goal setting for the weeks to come.  Everyone is excited to get started.   More to come next week on how it all goes down! 

Love,

Virginia