Due to increasing electricity and internet problems, added to the constant work we do in the vegetable garden and compost zone, it has been difficult to manage everything lately. But here we are, to share our activities and why we want to put them into practice.

On February the 8th, we did a donation of healthy food and gave a conscious eating workshop at the “Abansa” home in the city of Mérida. Since 1985 Abansa has been offering shelter to children at risk. Being convinced that today’s delinquent was the child at risk from yesterday, the orphanage seeks to protect these children to keep them from the path of violence and allow them to have a happy childhood. Currently, 12 children are given refuge, allowing them to grow up in a safe and healthy environment.

Part of our project involves being in solidarity with those who need it the most.

This donation was the opportunity to talk about healthy eating and to give healthy cooking techniques that can still be applied in moments of instability. The workshop was done thanks to the collaboration of the guys of the “Sustainable Nomad School” project, a project of friends who seek to promote sustainable living methods.

This first approach to the orphanage was with the objective of talking a little bit about how to eat healthy, and what we can do in times of crisis to eat healthy. In addition to healthy eating, during the workshop it was explained how to prepare homemade food.

These products are part of what was donated this day. Household staff was happy to receive the workshop and encouraged to continue learning more in the future about healthy eating.

We hope to continue to have the support of the “Sustainable Nomad School” project to empower us together thanks to sustainable methods in the perspective of improving our quality of life and the environment.

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It is hard to face one crisis upon another crisis. But solidarity comes to the surface when hope begins to sink. This solidarity is shown by many women by making masks to donate to hospitals, they are shown by those who collect different food or personal hygiene products to donate to families who, due to high prices, cannot buy such products. And we also see that solidarity in those who go out at least once a week to donate soups or prepared food to those who are seriously food insecure.

Without gas, without water, without gasoline, without electricity, many without receiving any salary due to confinement and with hyperinflation. That’s how millions of Venezuelans have faced quarantine.

As a social project we believe that solidarity is the basis that calls for change, it brings with it the idea that salvation cannot be individual, it must be collective. While others around us are in need, we cannot stay without doing anything. Individual salvation is not our thing.

For this reason, last month we created a specific solidarity fund to support those who during the quarantine were going through more difficult times because they cannot receive a monetary entry. Thanks to this we were able, during the quarantine, to collaborate financially with five people and at the same time, thanks to this fund and the funds collected so far through our gofundme campaign we were also able to collaborate with the Christian Organization “Arca de Noe” (OCAN). Organization that gives soup or a meal to people in need once a week in Mene de Mauroa, a town in the state of Falcón.

Before quarantine, this organization received people every 15 days and donated a plate of food, reaching up to 100 people during these days. During the quarantine, demand increased because the situation worsened, especially in Venezuelan towns. In these rural areas vegetables are extremely scarce because they can no longer be transported from the fields where they are harvested due to the lack of gasoline. In addition to food shortages due to the energy problem, prices began to be so high that it is very difficult for most to have access to food, as well as water. These obstacle of  high prices continue today. Because of this, OCAN began to carry out its program adapting it to confinement. OCAN is providing house-to-house support, and help about 150 people per day.

In addition to supporting them monetarily, we hope in the future to work together with them to seek to provide more sustainable responses to the problems facing our communities. We hope to be able to support them with the creation of organic gardens and in the future, if is possible, to be able to support them with the creation of rainwater harvesting systems, ecological water filters and other sustainable methods.

Thank you to all of those who have contributed their bit to make these collaborations possible. We hope you can continue supporting us and can also share our project with others.

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Walking through the streets of Merida on a sunny day in November, we noticed a small garden behind a preschool in the city. In a corner of the garden they had a hole where they threw some organic waste. When we saw it, the first thing that crossed our mind was to propose to the preschool the creation of a suitable community composting area, so that they could produce the necessary compost for the garden and at the same time promote composting in the community.

The preschool teachers were very interested in the proposal, having been prepared as environmental promoters and being aware of the need to make sustainable changes that allow us to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change, they welcomed our proposal.

After holding a meeting in December with staff from the educational circuit of the city, the date of the meeting where we would present the program to the parents of the preschool children was finally set. And so, at the end of January the program was presented, its reception was positive and from there the first community composting zone of ​​our project began.

Currently despite quarantine we continue composting, receiving food waste from some people in the community and hoping that when the confinement situation ends we can finish the vermicomposting bin that we were preparing and thus be able to encourage more people to join the composting process. So that less waste ends up in the streets or the already collapsed landfill of the city and we can have at our disposal a nutritious substrate for our plants.

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In the heart of Mérida, in the middle of an extensive queue of cars in search of gasoline, we walk with rakes, garden hoes, a pitchfork and a machete in hand, in search of an alternative.

The cars stop when there is no gasoline, we continue.

Excited to have the opportunity to have found the first place where we can put our goals into practice: our first community garden. We arrived at the place and began to clean it. While we do it, in the midst of fatigue, we stop to take strength imagining how great it will be once it is over. We imagine the finished raised beds, the small space for the compost and the possible water collection system that we can install. This initiative and its multiplication can open our minds and strengthen food security.

That excites us, cultivate awareness and vegetables, that the food is within our reach and that the gardens win in space on the asphalt. It encourages us to continue, to gain awareness and contribute to the increase of food sovereignty.

We work hard to break the wall of apathy

The reminder of why we do it remains in our mind. Put fight when there is resignation, cooperation when there is individualism. We do not know if we will win, but the process of breaking the wall of apathy on a daily basis is already a victory against resignation, and we want to continue breaking it, sowing, thinking.

We are dissatisfied with the way the world is structured; that leads us to act, to choose to do something against hunger, environmental destruction, suffering and loss of peace. Do something, instead of sitting around waiting for someone else to come to save us, or for the knot to undo itself. Do something, instead of being mere spectators of life, instead of staying in the inertia of the one who cares only to save himself and who only leaves the individualism and apathy that reinforce and lengthen more the crisis.

Despite not being experts in what we seek to do, of not having all the answers, we have chosen to act so as not to lose ourselves in despair. Faced with the risk of getting lost in words, of remaining motionless in the face of the dissatisfaction that afflicts us, we must raise words and tools. Do the work ourselves – and here we are.

What all of us can do

Our call is not that we all have to grow food, our call is that we be aware of the reasons for current hunger, disease and the need to have food independence in a sustainable way. Therefore, we have to recover the knowledge of our ancestors about how to be able to be self-sufficient, and learn to produce locally and organically, using less fossil energy.

We thank the school of Philosophy “New Acropolis” in the city of Mérida for allowing us to work in its field.

You can be part of a transition movement where cooperation and mutual help are the main guide, to grow food, to think, and to open steps towards a new, resilient and supportive society.

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