Manna Manna, How Does Your Garden Grow?

Please welcome our next guest blog from Becky! She will be working this year on the Preventive Health Center, teaching Women's Exercise and Children's English, and with our Nutrition program at a local school in Rumiloma. As Becky describes below, the last few weeks in Nutrition have been busy!



Hey everyone! My name is Becky and I’m excited to be a part of the 2010-2011 MPI Program Director team in Ecuador. I’m from Dallas, TX, but travelled to Nashville, TN to attend Vanderbilt University where I studied Human and Organization Development with a focus on international community development. After this year, I plan to return to Vanderbilt and begin my Master’s in Accountancy, after which I hope to continue working with non-profits.

One of the programs that I am working on is our nutrition program, along with Brock, Luke, Zoë, and Noel. Last year, we began working with an elementary school called Aliñambi that is very close to our Centro. We have created a curriculum that includes giving informational talks or charlas, growing fruits and vegetables in the garden, and cooking healthy dishes in the kitchen. While the actual class does not begin until January, this past week, we have begun preparing the garden, so that we can begin planting our crops to eventually be used in our cooking class.

Recently, we have been meeting with the school and Juan Carlos, the teacher whom we will be working closely with. We went over some of the specifics of the course and how it needs to change from last year. One change is that we want our classes to be more consistent with what Juan Carlos is teaching in his natural science class. We will also be working with a local Ecuadorian in the kitchen to make sure that the recipes we make contain ingredients and use cooking methods that the students have access to.

Also, last year, Aliñambi gave us a very small plot of land with poor quality soil. Nothing grew in the space, which made the gardening part of the program unsuccessful. This year though, we have been given a huge plot of land measuring about 90ft by 15ft. When we began, the plot was completely covered with weeds and rogue crops from previous years. For the past week, we have been going to Aliñambe in the mornings to weed the area and to prepare the garden in order to present the space to the 6th grade class. Now that we are seeing the garden come together, we are really excited about starting the nutrition program in January.

Preventive Health Center Ch. 1: Making Lemonade from Lemons

The Manna center had something of a rough week last week. Monday we inexplicably lost electricity in half of the library; Tuesday the water stopped working in our bathroom sinks; and Thursday we were informed that we would have to indefinitely vacate two of our three upstairs rooms because our landlord had a verbal agreement with the prior tenant that if and when she returned she could have those rooms again, and we had nothing in writing that guaranteed us those particular rooms. The landlord told us we had to be out by Friday afternoon. Of course, in order to properly and poetically close the week, Friday morning while our landlord was trying to turn back on the water, something burst and suddenly our library ceiling was leaking from the ceiling in multiple places. By a great stroke of luck, Luke and Brock stopped by the library after a morning meeting in Rumiloma and discovered the leaks, so they were able to move our computers and bookshelves to a dry part of the room before the water could damage anything. That afternoon we moved out of the rooms upstairs and closed the library for the day due to water leaks.

The rooms that we lost were our Preventive Health Center room and the English classroom; we still have our big room with the kitchen that we use for women’s exercise and cooking classes. Lots of scrambling happened over the weekend to change our class schedule (which starts this week!) to accommodate all classes taking place at the big table in the library downstairs and figure out what to do with the PHC.

Hannah, Becky, and I, as program directors for the PHC, were particularly disheartened by the loss of our designated space. The PHC has been a difficult program to get off the ground, and to lose our room seemed like a cruel joke.
However, Mondays bring fresh ideas! Upon considering a portion of the women’s exercise room as a temporary home for the PHC while we figure out what to do about new spaces, the PHC began coming to life in our minds in a way it hadn’t before since we arrived in July. What if we put the table and books on a bookshelf on the raised, tiled section right next to the door so that when people come to the exercise and cooking classes they will be aware of us and take an active interest in the PHC? We can create a real space here to pull together and integrate into our other already thriving health programs an overarching Preventive Health Center in the same room.

With our morale boosted and our creative juices flowing, the three of us paid a visit to the Ministry of Health in Quito on Wednesday to request information and possibly materials on preventive health concerns in Ecuador. The folks at the MoH didn’t hesitate to answer our vague requests by giving us a mountain of posters, brochures, and other health literature for us to take home and properly outfit our new space with. They then proceeded to laugh good-naturedly at our awestruck and overly grateful reactions to such unexpected generosity.


The beginning bare bones of our new Preventive Health Center

So, despite what seemed like a thunderstorm of ill fortune last week, we on the Preventive Health Center team are excited for new prospects afforded by unexpected calamity.

Needless to say, we’re going to be getting a contract for that room in writing.

The Big Move Pt. I

This past week has been a test of ingenuity, patience, and (occasionally) pure muscle but we did it... we successfully moved out of the apartment and... drum roll please... we got our entire deposit back! Between moving everything out of the rooms, painting every wall twice and sealing up the hobbit door, it was certainly a time commitment. Although it is amazing to have two extra couches in the common room for meetings (and TV watching), the house certainly does feel smaller without our little apartment. Next week we will begin the process of moving out of this lovely home to our new one in Sangolqui! But until then... a little excerpt from Brock, our handyman extraordinaire.

The story of the hobbit door.

We finished moving out of the apartment this past week and I gotta tell you, a lot of work went into fixing and cleaning it. No project took more time and energy than the hobbit door. Background; the hobbit door was Bibi’s first project as Country Director and it served as the gateway to get from the house to the apartment. Before the door we had to climb on a ledge and through a window or walk around the outside of the house and into the neighbor’s house that was below the apartment.

The project started with Sam and me destroying the stairs inside the apartment that went to the hobbit door since the opening started about 3 feet off the ground. After taking out the stairs, Sam, Luke and I made mortar and filled in the hole with CMU block flush on the outside of the wall. While this was drying we took the sledge hammer to the outside hobbit door stairs. We
then used ghetto rigged form boards to pour concrete that we also made on the roof of the house. We had to hold the form boards in place until the concrete set. Once the concrete was dry it took several coats of stucco to make the inside wall smooth. But the landlord gave it the ok. This came as a great relief after Sam, Luke and I along with some help from Jack spent the better part of two and a half days working on the hobbit door.

And now... PICTURES!!

Teen Talk

Time already for our second guest blog: meet Ashley! Programatically, Ashley will be working with the teen center, women's exercise, children's English, and community liaisons with Manna. Today she's getting us up-to-date on happenings with teens:


Joseph, Ashley, Juan, and Jasson at the Manna Center

Hi there, I’m Ashley Hanson, a member of the super exciting group of ’10-’11 PDs. I am from Chagrin Falls, Ohio but definitely headed south for school at Vanderbilt (the weather is just so much nicer there), where I majored in Human and Organizational Development. I focused particularly on international and community development, which has led perfectly into our work here in Ecuador.

I have had the privilege of working with the teen center, which has been a complete blast. Some would say that it’s just a bunch of young teenagers playing video games, but it is so much more. Teens begin arriving at the library at 2:30 in order to stand by the desk and point at the clock, anxiously awaiting the opening of the teen center at 4:00. In addition to the beloved video games, we frequently play chess, ping pong, and a plethora of board games. Some of the teens serenade us with their guitar and vocal skills, at times passing along their knowledge so that we can all play together.

During an interview for our upcoming promotional video, one of the teens who recently became acquainted with the centro discussed how important it has been in his life. He explained that the teen center gives the teens a place to hang out, have fun with friends, and stay safe. Before that, at times I’ve questioned that depth of the impact that the teen center has in the community, but he made it clear that it has been integral in his life and in the lives of many of his friends and family. It makes it even more rewarding and encouraging to hear such positive feedback!


Jasson and Cynthia with their projects at one of our August workshops

As Hannah mentioned, we have also partnered with the Departamento Nacional de Jóvenes, a section of the Ecuadorian government that deals with children and adolescents. We have held 2 workshops already: the first one focused on discovering identity, and the second exploring teens’ rights and responsibilities. We played games, had discussions, and even incorporated some art. Our final workshop with just our group is this Friday. For our next event, we will meet with a broader group of 2,500 adolescents so that they can collectively work to make an impact using their rights. It is really exciting to be able to work together with the government toward improving the lives and situations of adolescents here in the valley.

Happy Birthday to our Jefa!

Wednesday we made a midweek trip into Quito to celebrate the 30th birthday of our wonderful country director, Bibi! After something of a disappointment in arriving at Café Toledo to find that the live music started 2 ½ hours later than we’d been led to believe over the phone (the band wasn’t even there yet), that we were the only customers in the restaurant at 8pm, and that food and drinks cost Stateside prices, Bibi decided to move the party down the street to a Thai/Japanese restaurant in La Mariscal. Over an assortment of Pad Thai and sushi roll dishes, we were able to properly commemorate Bibi’s big day!



Of course, a single day of festivities doesn’t suffice when it’s in honor of Bibi. We extended the celebration to Thursday night at the Manna House, giving it a home-grown flavor of kitchen-baked cake and dining table happy birthday singing.



Happy birthday, Bibi! We're so happy to share in your 30th with you!!