Pueblo a Pueblo has added yet another partner to its Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Project, equipping Nueva Providencia Elementary School at the end of 2013 with a brand new set of bathrooms and hand-washing stations, as well as a state-of-the-art septic system. Having started construction on this project in October of last year, our lead constructor, Juan Ratzan, along with his crew of helping hands, oversaw the creation of these new sanitary resources, which will serve the needs of 80 children from grades K - 6. We at Pueblo a Pueblo are happy to announce that the bathrooms are now fully functional, and the hand-washing stations are being used to the benefit of both students and teachers.

The funding for the project came from our friends at H2O for Life, an international non-profit organization which links schools in the developing world with students in the global north. Their unique approach to clean water development, which draws on service-learning programs for youth organizations and schools in North America and Europe to fund WASH campaigns in Africa and Latin America, has proven to be an effective engine for development on the community level.

Sandy Mendoza, the WASH Project Assistant, said about the new development, “This project is important because it finally helps cover the needs of the school in Nueva Providencia. Before there was a poor sanitary facility open to the entire community, and with so many people from the school and outside community using the bathrooms, maintenance was nearly impossible. Some days the kids would come to school and find their bathrooms completely unusable.”

“And it’s not just about construction,” Sandy continued. “We’re trying to promote good health habits in other sustainable ways. By giving hygiene classes to students in partner schools, we’re giving them knowledge they can use to lead healthy, happy lives. Our hope is that these hygiene habits will spread from the students to their families, and eventually to the entire community.”

2013 brought both growth and maturity to our Organic School Garden Project.

We entered a sustainability phase with our model garden in Panabaj elementary school. Through a series of five participatory sessions, community leaders designed a plan for the school to assume full control of the garden’s functioning, including routine maintenance, activities with students, and resource procurement.

We partnered with three new schools in the San Lucas municipality, marking the first time that Pueblo a Pueblo has expanded its reach outside of Santiago Atitlán. Drawing from our prior experience with schools in Santiago, we have grounded these new partnerships in a revised implementation plan and a more comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system that will allow us to gauge how steadily we move towards project objectives.

We also lead a parent training initiative in two partner schools in Chacayá and La Cumbre. Thirty parents participated in a course on the basics of organic gardening, which hopefully will lead to healthier eating habits for students at home. In a similar attempt to link learning and doing, students who attended our vacation garden camp experimented for the first time with cooking healthy recipes that can be made almost entirely from produce harvested in gardens.

For sure, 2014 will be a busy year: our project staff will continue to work in our seven partner schools, train approximately sixty local and government educators, and hold garden classes with over a thousand students.  And like in every other long-term project, we expect to meet new and different challenges.

We’re confident, however, that if we listen closely to communities and stay true to our mission, our Organic School Gardens Project will be able to build on the momentum that we’ve gained over the past four years.

We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop as we do.