MPI Ecuador Slideshow

Hello blog readers! Recently we were approached by Andrew Preston, the US Director of Manna Project, about making an informational video for those who want to know more about our international sites. Noel and I promptly set out to make the video but were interrupted by an outbreak of political unrest and no internet in our new house. About two weeks later we realized we needed to get that video together so we requested help from the rest of the PDs down here in collecting photos of Ecuador, its people and our Centro in Rumiloma. Everybody was more than helpful; without them this slide show would not have come together as beautifully as it did.

The video addresses the unique vitality of Ecuador, its various cultures and the problems that have arisen from stratification of social classes. It also shows what we as Manna Project International are hoping to accomplish in our Centro.

We really hope you enjoy this!

MPI Ecuador Slideshow

Besos Chao Chao

Can't read or write yet? We've got the class for you.

With today's guest blog we will have finally made our way through all nine of MPI-Ecuador's 2010-2011 Program Directors! Take it away, Zoë!





Hello to all of our blog readers! Thanks for your continued interest. I’m Zoë McKinney, your guest blogger for this week. You can think of me as “Soy” if you’d like, or So-wee,” as that’s what most of the library kids and their parents call me. I call Palos Verdes Estates, CA (just outside of Los Angeles) home, but I went to college at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. I just graduated this past May with a degree in Human and Organizational Development and Spanish. I’m thrilled to be part of the MPI-Ecuador team this year and also grateful for the opportunity to tell you about the work we’ve been doing down here in the Chillos Valley. I teach the Children’s English intermediate class, Children’s Art and work with the nutrition program. Today I’m going to talk about our Children’s Art class, which we teach for an hour every week.

Arte para niños. Children’s art is a unique program at our Centro because it is the only class that we offer for children who can’t read and write. For fifty cents per three-month course, children can inscribe for our Art Around the World art class. I teach the class with Luke and Sam. We will be focusing on four regions of the world. Each section of the course, we will do a series of lessons that will incorporate a small lesson about culture, technique, or a famous artist, followed by that day’s art project.

What I think is most important about our class is that it offers a creative outlet that most of our students don’t get elsewhere. The Ecuadorian school system does not stress the development of creative thinking. I have spent time helping children in the library with their homework. Many of the assignments I have seen have required simple copying of words and sentences and very little, if any, creative thinking. During art class, we do not leave out an example of the project and consistently encourage students to work without copying each other. After a few classes, I have already seen a real rise in confidence levels. Where certain students came in not knowing where to start when we would give them idea, they now seem to look forward to the outlet.

Children’s Art is a program I initially didn’t see myself teaching, but I am finding more and more value in it every week and look forward to developing it as a program alongside Luke and Sam. Thanks for reading!

Sweet Home Alabama in Rumiloma

In the coming days we will be posting about our experience of the police strike and assault on the president that took over national news late last week. We will also be coming to you with more pictures of the new house; but for now, this week we have another guest blog! Please welcome Sam Arkin:

¿Que pasa everyone? That is about as good as my Spanish gets—or pretty close. My name is Sam Arkin and it’s my turn to guest blog as a Manna Ecuador Program Director. I came to Ecuador fresh off of an 11 month backpacking trip that took me all over Asia, the Middle East and Africa; I thought it was a good idea to get some travel/life experience right after I graduated from Connecticut College in 2009. I heard about MPI from a friend while I was traveling, applied, and the rest is history. I’m originally from Northern California, so it might be surprising to some that I don’t know Spanish very well. I actually studied Chinese and Vietnamese when I was in school, so one of my main challenges, so far, is actually learning Spanish. As for the programs I work with, I co-run the library and teen center, as well as teach adult English and children’s art. I am also grant manager with our last guest blogger, Luke Shallenberger, who actually does say ‘pop.’ How funny is that?

So, I have the pleasure of talking about Adult English this week. I know it may seem boring, given the events of the past week (i.e. the police in Ecuador kidnapping the President and trying to overthrow the government), but Adult English is anything but boring. I teach Intermediate Adult English along with Brock Peterson. We are sort of a two headed monster, so to speak. We hold class twice a week, once on Tuesday and once on Wednesday. The class number fluctuates between 7-15, but we have a group of regulars that like to show up and laugh at our bad jokes and poor Spanish pronunciation. They are a wonderful group of people who are very supportive of each other and are very supportive of Brock and me when we butcher something in Spanish.

At the end of every class we reserve time (it is sort of a passed-on tradition) for a song. The students listen to the song and fill in the ‘blanks’ that are on a lyric sheet that we give them. In our second class, we thought it would be interesting to use Sweet Home Alabama as our song of the week. It turned into a hysterical lesson about Southern vernacular and geography, mixed in with Watergate and Neil Young. I have to say that Brock, being from Georgia, took the lead on that one. He didn’t really need any help from a Yank like me.

I hope that was somewhat insightful. Keep readin, y’all.

Movin´ on down... into the Valley!

This week we finally realized a change that´s been in the works for many months down here in Ecuador: we MOVED! The extra burden of packing, cleaning, painting, and repairing during the months of August and September paid off when we saw the beautiful, spacious house and yard we were to live in from now on in Sangolqui, further down in the Valle de los Chillos from Conocoto. What follows is a photo essay of your PDs in the process:

The house spent a couple of weeks in chaos as we cleared out of corners and packed three years of Manna history.






Our last dinner in the house in Conocoto was a bittersweet occasion...


But the next day as we hustled to move furniture out for good...



...filled up the moving truck...




...waved goodbye to the city we´d come to call home in two short months...




...we couldn´t help but feel excited...


...as we looked forward to seeing our new house for the first time!







All that moving made us hungry. Solution while we were still between functional kitchens? Almuerzos to go!


But our work wasn´t done yet. Before turning over the keys to our old landlord, there was some serious cleaning and fixing up to do. Accordingly, we spent several more days making the half-hour journey by bus back to Conocoto to get our hands dirty.






Koukah, Bibi´s dog, was more than a little confused by the transformation of the house.



We celebrated the end of the moving process with almuerzos on the roof of our old house: one last tribute to Manna´s life in Conocoto.


To inaugurate our new house, on October 10 we held a housewarming barbeque (or wasi pichai, the Kichwa word used here).





Despite the threat of the usual afternoon rain that's been plaguing us this October, the sun stayed out all afternoon for our Sunday barbeque, and with a great turnout consisting of friends, neighbors, and our beloved Dr. Lance (our trusted doctor here who takes care of all our ailments and injuries, no matter what the time of day or night), it was a very successful initiation of Manna's new home.

We are so happy to be here!!

New Horizons in Microfinance

Today brings you a guest blog from Luke - or, "Profe Luka" as he is often referred to at our library. Enjoy!



What’s up MPI Ecuador blog readers!? My name is Luke Shallenberger and I’m a current Program Director here in Ecuador and your guest blogger for this week, so get excited. I’ll start off with a little background information. I proudly hail from Big Ten Country. That’s right, the Midwest, where we say things like “pop”, which gets you scrutinized by the other 8 people in the Manna house. I grew up in Mahomet, IL, a small but fantastic town located in the center of the state. I graduated from Illinois State University in 2008 with a degree in business administration. After graduation I spent two years in St. Louis, MO before taking on this adventure here in Ecuador. I currently work with our agriculture, children’s art, cooking class, and microfinance programs. Due to some exciting recent developments, I’m going to be focusing on microfinance today.

Our microfinance program here in Ecuador is closely linked to our partner organization, Esperanza y Progreso del Valle (EPV), a small microfinance loan company. One of our main goals for the program is to strengthen EPV in order to make loans more available and affordable for the individuals in the communities that we serve. The ambiguity of our microfinance program makes it unique among Manna’s programs. It has taken on many new ideas and directions since our arrival in July. Some of these ideas have blossomed while some have remained stagnant not due to a lack of effort on our part but unfortunately a lack of resources. Needless to say, on some of these fronts microfinance has been a bit frustrating at times. However, I along with Jack and Brock have some good news regarding very recent developments with EPV and microfinance.

Jack, Brock, and I pulled an all-nighter last week (I must state that it was not due to procrastination but rather unforeseen circumstances) to put together a proposal for a small business class to present to EPV. The idea for the class was built upon the hard work of last year’s PDs, Erik and Chet, who conducted numerous surveys suggesting a need for such a class and produced a class outline. We proposed the idea of this class to EPV in the hopes of making it a collaborative effort, and they immediately jumped on board. The basis of the class is to teach basic business principles and practices to entrepreneurs and current business owners as well as to provide EPV with more clients. Upon completion of the class the students will present us with a business proposal which will be reviewed by EPV to be included in their loan application process. We hope to have this class up and running by October 25th, so between now and then we have much to do; but we are extremely excited about the promise of our new microfinance plans!

Hope you all have a great week! ¡Hasta lluego!