Sweet, Sweet Compost Project

One thing I have found that we as Peace Corps Volunteers can offer in our respective communities is our access to information. This information can come in many forms, whether it is teaching people how to use computers and the internet, showing farmers a new technique that is used in a different part of the country or by introducing a small business to a distributor based out of Quito to sell their products. For you see many of the people in my site (and other sites I would assume) basically just live in their own little world surrounded by the same people and setting for their entire life, rarely venturing out of their tiny little bubble or if they do it is only for a small, short vacation. Therefore I have found that I can use this access to information and contacts through the Peace Corps, whether it is another volunteer or an Ecuadorian contact, to help my community with their progressive development.
One such case of this utilization of contacts is a recent compost project I have been undertaking the past six months or so. It all started out when my NGO, The Colinas Verdes Foundation, was preparing to give a small workshop on composting and organic fertilizers. In preparation for a composting/organic fertilizer workshop my co-workers mentioned to me that it was hard to convince the local farmers to utilize compost because of the long drawn out process that can last as long as a year before it is ready. Remembering a training session we had in my first couple of weeks, I contacted a volunteer from up north who had presented to us a special kind of composting bacteria he had access to in his site and after speaking with him he was very excited to help me and immediately sent me about a half pound of these special bacterias that come in powder form.
Together, Colinas Verdes and I, did a test as to whether or not these bacterias actually worked and sure enough they broke down all of the organic matter and in just a little over a month the compost was ready to be applied. So that following week I presented these “magic bacterias” in our composting and organic fertilizer workshop to about 20 of the local farmers from San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In my presentation I showed how easy it was to make and that even though it required a little bit more labor in the first couple of weeks, the compost would be ready in about a month. I also expressed to them that within each pile of this now “living” compost they made, that if they saved a third or fourth of their pile and started another compost pile, that the bacterias would transfer over and start breaking down the new organic material. The farmers seemed to be very impressed with this new type of compost and at the conclusion of my presentation I offered to set up a time with each and every farmer in attendance to come to their farms and make this compost with them and I am happy to say that five of the farmers accepted my invitation and we have since made some huge mounds of this “sweet, sweet compost.” (I was even able to talk my girlfriend Katie into helping with one of the compost piles).
This Friday the Colinas Verdes Foundation will be having another composting workshop in a neighboring town where I will be presenting my “magic composting bacterias” again and hopefully I can persuade a couple of these farmers to begin composting using this new technology.