Current development projects

The following information provides a snap-shot of the work of Yanapuma Foundation. We try to regularly update this page to reflect current developments.

December 2011

For the last two months we have been busy wrapping up our project in Bua, sponsored by the Ferguson Charitable Trust, to create vegetable plots with a group of 20 women, in combination with sapling nurseries. The project was a great success in the end and we learned an immense amount as the project progressed. It inspired us to envisage two further phases of the same work. The first would be to expand the vegetable plots on each of the women's farms to create surplus production next year so that this can be exchanged or sold to neighbors. This phase would offer more opportunity to learn about growing in general, overcome any setbacks due to insects and other diseases, and gain in confidence. The third phase would be to expand production again in order to have sufficient excess to trade in the city of Santo Domingo.At this point there is the potential for substantial increase in income for those women who choose to go to this level.

At the same time we would encourage in tandem the continuation of the sapling nurseries to produce young trees for sale and replanting in the community. This will provide another important source of extra income.

Another important activity during the last couple of months has been to create a report for the Tsa'chila of Bua that lists the investment that we have made in the community over the past few years. The Tsa'chila are always wary of being taken advantage of, due to many years previous experience with mestizos and local authorities who only come to them to offer anything when they need something in return, such as votes in upcoming elections. So when the ruling cabildo requested that we present them with a list of projects that we had carried out in the community, we welcomed the opportunity despite the extra work involved in combing through our records for the past 5 years.

The resulsts were surprising even to us. Since we started working in Bua we have transferred a total of $181,270 to the community in goods, services, donations, etc. Of that amount, $49,470 has come from our own funding through our own commercial activities with the Spanish school and volunteer department.

Another activity has been to begin to look ahead to 2012 and figure out what projects we can carry out with the available funding, confirmed and unconfirmed. We will continue to work with the Tsa'chila in various of the Tsa´chila communities, but are seeking ways to develop projects in the Cabo San Francisco area on a similar scale. This work will focus on the social and economic development of the community, with the overall aim of protecting the precious and sensitive biodiversity of the region from further and continud degradation due to illegal logging, felling for pasture, and other unsustainable practices.

October 2011

During August and September we have been focused on a project in the Tsa’chila community of Bua, developing vegetable plots and sapling nurseries with a group of 21 women and 3 men.
The project is sponsored by the Ferguson Charitable Trust, and is aimed at improving the nutritional level of the Tsa’chila as well as providing a source of income through the sale of saplings for reforestation projects.
The current crop of 10,000 saplings is being planted in the nearby parish of Puerto Limón during October by a group of students from the US organization Thinking Beyond Borders. The students are staying in the Tsa’chila community of Los Naranjos with host families, and traveling to different parts of the parish each day to continue planting out the saplings. The aim of this project is to protect the local water courses. In many places farmers have deforested right to the water’s edge and cattle and pigs contaminate the rivers.
A donation from the TBB group is buying the trees from the Tsa’chila in Bua. We continue to look for further markets for saplings with the aim of developing family nurseries as a source of extra income for Tsa’chila families. Local leaders in Puerto Limón are keen to carry on reforestation with Yanapuma’s help in the coming years, but want the trees to be grown in the 3 Tsa’chila communities that lie within parish boundaries. These are Los Naranjos, Peripa and El Poste.
Meanwhile, the vegetable plots have been developing very nicely, after the initial setbacks due to particularly adverse weather conditions in the spring. The women have produced healthy crops of vegetables – tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, spinach, chard, parsley, cilantro, etc. These have been consumed and traded between families in the village.
One of the critical factors in any project with the Tsa’chila is their general lack of self esteem and faith in their own abilities. Thus it has been particularly heartening to see their obvious pride in the success of their vegetable plots. What we have achieved with this project is a small but very significant beginning upon which I am sure we will be able to build in the coming years.
Another important aspect of the project has been to improve nutritional knowledge and provide ways of incorporating the new produce into their diets. Changing peoples’ eating habits is one of the most difficult things to achieve anywhere in the world, and so we were aware of the challenges that we would face with the Tsa’chila. But thanks to the dedication and communication skills of Janet, a local women, significant changes have begun to take place in their eating habits. Janet has visited each home on different occasions to prepare a meal with the women of the house, showing them step by step how to include more vegetables into familiar dishes and how to create new ones. The results have been both delicious and nutritious, and have been well appreciated. Once again, it was interesting to see the reactions of the women, whose initial response to having Janet in their homes was to view from a distance what she was doing as though hardly interested. But once they realized that it was really nothing overly complicated, they soon warmed to the task and eagerly awaited another visit from Janet to show them more new recipes.

Elsewhere . . . In Estero de Plátano our two intrepid interns from Union College have continued to work with the scholarship students as well as other local groups. They have been supervised by Guadalupe, our social/community worker, who has continued our project sponsored by the Souter Charitable Trust involving education in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights for the youth of the village. Working with the youth on a regular basis has served to strengthen them as a group, create a shared identity, and begin a process of valuing themselves differently and creating a future for themselves. This is something new for  a village like Estero de Plátano where traditionally youth follow their parents footsteps with early pregnancies and no vision of achievement for themselves.
We visited Estero at the start of September to meet with each social group as part of a series of planning workshops, to define goals and set priorities for the future. In an earlier letter to each group we had suggested the idea of declaring themselves an ecological village, advising that we should all think hard about the pros and cons to such a decision. The idea was greeted with much enthusiasm and we suggested a visit to Bahia de Caracquez, a self-declared ecological town further down the Ecuadorian coast to find out what their experience has been.
Plans were later put on hold until we learn more about a potential scandal that is simmering under the surface in the village that has to do with potential mismanagement of funds by one or more individuals. A large fund was received from an organization for various purposes, and there are suspicions that some of the money may have gone astray. We do not want to fall into any misunderstandings, either through being seen to be working with the same people who are under suspicion, or by trying to dig up the truth in a matter that does not directly concern us as the sponsors. So it is a delicate situation that we will have to patiently seek ways to resolve before we can move forward. But such are the challenges of development work!

In the Tsa'chila community of El Poste we began offering PC classes. Intern Jamie San Andres has been living in the communty while she gives the classes every day, as well as giving English classes a couple of times a week. These classes point out an interesting dynamic in our work with the Tsa'chila which simultaneously looks back and attends to matters of cultural rescue, preservation and promotion, and looks forward to connecting the Tsa'chila in new ways with the world that has so rudely invaded theirs.

As funding provided by the Souter and Ferguson Trusts tails off, we are looking forward to our next projects, although a little anxiously. We have several proposals under consideration by a wide range of organizations, but all following more or less the same line of development work that we have established. We have built up a small reserve fund that we will begin to draw on until we receive full funding for a new project. We are hoping to continue being able to keep our staff together as we have created an effective team that can attend to both the technical and social aspects of sustainable development work.

Another activity that Silvia and Guadalupe have been busy with is updating our strategic plan. This is an ongoing process, and as we continue to work and gain more insight into the situation of the communities that we work with we adapt to take account of these revelations. Theories abound about how to carry out successful sustainable development, but unfortunately many of these fail to take into account local conditions, having been developed perhaps under very different assumptions and conditions with very different cultures. It is often frustrating to learn that one or other funding agency has a particular bee in their bonnet about a certain way of doing things and will either fund or refuse to fund projects based on theoretical criteria that may or may not apply to a particular case or culture.

August 2011

During July and August we have focused primarily on carrying out a project in Bua, funded by the Ferguson Trust, to create family vegetable plots and sapling nurseries, as well as to work with local women on improving nutrition for their families, and promoting self-confidence and development of their social abilities. It has become more and more evident to us over the last year or so that the Tsa'chila's history as individual families living scattered in the rain forest is a principle reason that they are unable to organize themselves on any other level than that of the family. The imposed system of government that they now have remains impotent, the result

June 2011

In April and May we have been busy in the community of Bua, working on a grant from the Ferguson Trust that is allowing us to set up vegetable plots and sapling nurseries on 20 farms. These are managed by the women of the household. The weather has been especially wet during the past two months which has slowed down progress somewhat and we have had to re-sow seeds on a few plots due to excessive damage by the rain. The saplings have taken root though and we currently have over 4000 in production. We are aiming to have as many as 10,000 ready for October when a group from Thinking Beyond Borders in the US will come down to plant the trees in the parish of Puerto Limón where 3 Tsa'chila communities are located. We have signed an accord with the parish council there and the Fundación Acción Social Caritas (FASCA) to carry out a reforestation project to protect the water courses of the principal rivers. The accord is for the project in October and for a larger scale project for the entire parish during the following years, subject to finding funding.

In the Tsa'chila community of Los Naranjos we have been offering computer classes since the start of April. Fortyeight people signed up at the start for the classes, and we decided to offer them on two days a week instead of one. We donated two computers to the community, with funding provided by the Colége Edouard Montpetit from Canada. We have also been involved in working with women and farmers of Los Naranjos on preparing for subsequent projects that we will carry out there.

In the community of Estero de Plátano on the Pacific coast we have installed a clean drinking water system with the aid of a group of UK volunteers and the Fundación Agua Muisne who oversaw the work and the technical part of the installation. Meanwhile, intern Jamie San Andrés has been working with the children who are receiving scholarships from Yanapuma, helping the new students to adapt to secondary school and cope with the homework. We are inviting the 11 scholarship children to Quito on the last weekend of May to visit museums and the historic center.

We have also been busy getting involved in trying to create a plan to protect the forests of the Cabo San Francisco area. Both Estero de Plátano and Caimito are in this area, which is one of incredible biological diversity and importance. With the area offshore being declared a marine reserve it is now doubly important to protect the forest and avoid any kind of run-off that could threaten the marine life of the area. We have been working with George Fletcher, our local coordinator in the area to put together a project proposal to purchase land that is for sale there. In the course of preparation it emerged that purchasing the land may not be as important as working with local stake-holders to create a plan to protect the forest in a way that also helps local communities to survive. There are many competing interests, including illegal squatters and loggers who cause great damage to the area. Our aim is to bring together all those who wish to sustainably manage the area, before any new roads are build into the forest, to create a plan and put it into action.

March and April

We are pleased to announce the addition of Silvia Perugachi to our team. She is an Ecuadorian who studied in New York, and holds a Masters in International Development from the New School. Her role as projects coordinator will inevitably involve plenty of hands-on involvement in the communities that we are working with.

During February and March there have been some interesting developments among the Tsa’chila communities. In Bua the political/social situation became complicated for us during this time. The new Cabildo finally took office in January, and as is common, were walking on air at the start until they finally started to settle down. We had begun a project to offer computer proficiency training to members of the community, financed by La Vida from the UK.

Guadalupe, our social/community worker had put around word of the classes, and 18 people signed up. On the first day of classes 40 people showed up! Obviously there was a great demand, and we had to reorganize ourselves somewhat. Instead of offering the classes twice a week we doubled up to four times a week with two groups, capping these at 15. We also bought an extra, used computer so that we had a total of 4. While 3 or 4 to a computer was still not ideal, it was an improvement. We enlisted the help of a group of youth to teach the classes. They already possessed basic computer skills, and in return for teaching the classes Guadalupe gave them classes in internet use, which is something they requested.

But then local politics and rivalries came into play. First the cabildo did not want the classes to take place in the health center, which is a place often used for community meetings. But a neighbor stepped in and allowed us to use an extra room in her home. Then the cabildo would not lend the chairs for the classes, and so they took place for a few days on the floor before we bought plastic tables and chairs. In the end we suspended the classes after the first module was complete, and moved the computers to the Tsa’chila community of Los Naranjos, where community members had requested similar training. These classes started at the end of March.

Meanwhile we continued the project funded by the Ferguson Trust in Bua, working with families on setting up tree nurseries to grow saplings for sale, developing vegetable plots to improve nutrition of the families, and helping the women with their organizational and leadership skills. This project will run until September when we will buy the first batch of trees that they have grown to plant in another community.

We have pulled back from working in Bua for the time being until the situation clears. We will continue the Ferguson project to its conclusion, and solicited a written document from the cabildo before continuing with the project. The cabildo has said that they want to have written documents for our activities and create a formal plan, which is something we welcome. However, to date they have not convened a meeting with us to move forward at all. We helped the cultural group to prepare a project proposal for the MIES (Ministerio de Inclusion Social y Economico) which we are hoping they will get approved as it will give them plenty of work to get on with for the rest of the year. It will be good for them to work with another organization and be able to put into practice what (we hope!) they have learned through working with Yanapuma.

During January to March, intern Ben Hughey from Dartmouth College worked in 3 Tsa’chila communities (Los Naranjos, El Poste and Peripa) tracing their boundaries, roads and rivers with GPS equipment to produce maps. These were presented to the communities when completed and can be used for future planning.
As a result of this activity, the doors were opened for Yanapuma to become more involved. So we held meetings in each community to carry out a participatory evaluation of the communities as a step towards defining projects for the coming years. As these communities are smaller than Bua, they seem less politically divided, and they are definitely poorer which is a good justification for us pulling back from working in Bua to focus on the greater needs of these communities.

It has been interesting to listen to the stories of the Tsa´chila about when they received title to their lands and the kind of lifestyle they enjoyed in those days. Their stories underscored the abruptness of the changes that have overtaken them and explain their inability to adapt to the very different mentality of those who moved into the jungle around them to clear fell it and begin conventional agriculture.

Meanwhile, in Estero de Plátano, after over a year of searching and waiting, we are finally on the move with the project to install a clean drinking water plant in the village with the help of Fundación Agua Muisne. In the end we are installing the plant in the local school. The water will be sold to the community for 25 cents for 5 gallons, and after a small maintenance fee has been taken out for Agua Muisne and payment for the persons in charge of running the system, the profit will go towards buying necessary materials for the school.

We also continue to work with the youth on issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as supporting the scholarship students in their secondary studies. Interns from Union College, Nik and Allie will be in the community until the end of March. Former intern Amelia Brandt will return in May to carry on the work there, and in June we will receive two more interns from Union College for 9 months work in Estero.

Volunteer groups from the UK have been actively contributing to our work. In Chilcapamba (building a crafts display area for the community to sell directly to tourists and visitors and rebuilding the house of an elderly resident), Estero de Plátano (building a class room for the school and the base for the water purification plant) and Chichicorumi (working on the accommodation part of the new museum building).  

Last updated 05/10/11