Volunteers from Abroad

When I joined the Peace Corps I mentally prepared myself for a very solitary experience, one where I was going to be working alone in a foreign land with the only resources provided to me were by the Peace Corps and my surrounding community. But in my time here I am happy to say that that has not been the case as I have received support from all kinds of people who are still living in the US but want to help me in my cause any way they can.
That is where Jay and Melanie of New Mexico come in. About 8 months ago the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that I work for, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, was going through a small lull in-between projects. In that time I was looking for stuff to do so I went to our website, http://www.colinasverdes.org/, and decided that it needed a drastic overhaul. After choosing to take on this project I was going through a list of friends in my head who might be able to help me with the web design and amazingly enough I received a message that same day on my blog from a couple by the name of Jay & Melanie who own a web design company (check them out at http://www.websitesanddesign.com/) and were very interested in helping to redo the Colinas Verdes website. Well the first thing I did was jump for joy at the fact that someone other than my Mom & Dad was actually reading my blog and then I celebrated the fact that these people were so eager to help.
First off I guess I should give you a little bit of back round information about the Colinas Verdes Foundation. They were formed in the mid-1990’s as an organization to help with the conservation of southern Ecuador’s natural resources (with a focus on Podocarpus National Park) as well as to help with the development of the local farmers and their practices to provide a better standard of living for them and their families. That being said, Colinas Verdes solicits money from all over the world to fund projects in areas such as irrigation, coffee, a starch made from the Achira plant and marmalade production to name a few. With some NGO’s I have had heard horror stories about how they just take the money and do minimal work on the proposed project and just keep the rest of the money but I am happy to say that that is not the case with the Colinas Verdes Foundation; they are truly a remarkable group that is very organized and dedicated to helping the people of southern Ecuador.
Now, given the fact that the first action possible donors will take in approving the foundation for a project funding is to go to their website, I thought it essential to update http://www.colinasverdes.org/ to a tool they could use to portray their professionalism and successful past projects. Therefore, over the past 8 months I have worked essentially as a liaison between the Colinas Verdes team and Jay & Melanie to create a website (in both English and Spanish) containing the mission, vision, past projects, galleries of images and enabling outsiders to contact us from all over the world.
As well as building a website to benefit Colinas Verdes, we have also created “buttons” on the home page of http://www.colinasverdes.org/ that will direct people to some of the other smaller organizations of the San Pedro de Vilcabamba community. The beauty of these “buttons” is that these small organizations now have a web presence that will enable them to direct people to should they pose the interest. (We have actually had one person contact us who is interested in importing honey to the US!)
From a personal standpoint I am deeply indebted to Jay and Melanie for all their help. Previous to this project I felt as though even though I was a member of the Colinas Verdes team I was not really providing too much value to the organization. I was more or less just another set of hands that could work a shovel or fill a plastic bag with dirt. But since the website project I have felt that the team has grasped what I can do to help benefit the foundation and the resources I have available to me.
As well as receiving help from Jay & Melanie at http://www.websitesanddesign.com/, I would also like to thank my Mom the English teacher for all her help going through the English portion of the website. In sending her the pages to proofread I was amazed at how bad my English had gotten and I know myself as well as the Colinas Verdes team are very grateful for her help.
So if you are bored at your computer and looking for things to check out online (and I know you are if you are reading my blog) please check out http://www.colinasverdes.org/ and you will get an idea of everything this great organization stands for. I am especially proud of the Contact Us page, check it out!

SSssccarrryy Gringos

“to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.”
Above is the second goal of the Peace Corps and I believe that the following story is relevant.

A couple of weeks ago I was working with my organization, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, in a little town named Chalaca, about an hour south of San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In this small “pueblo” we were putting in one of our “Support Centers” which is part of our initiative to furnish groups of coffee growers with the facilities to wash and dry their coffee as well as to grow new coffee plants. While we were there I noticed how all of the kids were keeping their distance from me. Usually the kids are very curious about the gringo and always come up to me to talk but this instance wasn’t the case. After trying to talk with them a couple of times and the kids running away from me I asked the people we were working with why the kids were so scared of me. That is when they explained to me that someone, most likely their parents, told the kids that if they aren’t good little boys and girls the gringos will come and either cut out their eyes or chop off their arms/legs to sell in the United States or Europe. After we all laughed about the absurdity of this idea I made it my mission to befriend these kids. So for the rest of the day I sat with the kids and we just chatted it up about school, what kinds of games they like to play and any other topic that may be pertinent to a 7 yr old. By the end of the day I had three little boys following me around asking me all kinds of questions and trying to help me with whatever task I was doing at the time. So I think they got over their fear that I was going to rob them of certain body parts.
This past week I went back to the town of Chalaca to show the people there how to compost and make organic fertilizers/pesticides. My new friends finally came around after about an hour and were hilarious in their attempts to help me. Making compost constitutes mixing all kinds of organic material that needs to be finely chopped up with machetes and then put into levels in the designated area. My little new little helpers were basically fighting over who gets to carry the bag of cow manure over to the compost area, something that was cracking all of the grown ups up. One of the little boys even made his shirt into a makeshift basket and filled it with about 30 oranges to give to me.
Well after a couple of hours both the compost piles and organic pesticides were complete and it was time for me to go home. But before I left, I decided to give these sweet, poor little boys a couple of gifts. The first was some coloring books with magic markers that my Mom had sent me from the US. As I pulled them out of my bag their faces immediately lit up and I literally felt like Santa Claus on Christmas morning and I realized how rare it was for these great, sweet, well-mannered little boys to receive a gift, especially something new. My next gift was an old Nerf football that my girlfriend, Katie, had brought from the US and had given to me just before she left. At first these little boys had no idea what it was and thought I was giving them some new type of sponge to wash dishes with, but after a little explanation of “Futbol Americano” and showing them how to throw it they were soon chucking it around the yard and chasing each other in circles.
As I mentioned above the second goal of the Peace Corps is “to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.” The idea of this is to give the people in the countries we are serving a feel of who Americans are, why we are here and ultimately for us to give them an idea of the culture in which we live. This isn’t done through a class or workshops, it is accomplished by the volunteers living in the communities and interacting with the people on a daily basis. This situation with the children of Chalaca was definitely an extreme example of this but it really made an impression on me how truly uninformed these people really are, especially in the poorer communities, about the world outside of Southern Ecuador.
After this experience in Chalaca I sent the Peace Corps office in Washington DC an email suggesting that they change their second goal to read; “to promote a better understanding that the American people will not cut the arms or legs off of the peoples served…” Just kidding.