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During a workshop at the Instituto Tonantzin Tlalli (the ITT, the Group's education center in Ejutla, Oaxaca), participants learn how to read the landscape and apply land restoration techniques. By digging drenches, or swales, following the natural contour lines of the land, runoff water is slowed down and permeates the soil, recharging underground acquifers.
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The rope pump exemplifies appropriate technologies that the Group promotes within rural communities - it is inexpensive, easy to build, practical, and has the potential to dramatically improve living conditions. The solar panels are used to pump large quantities of water to storage tanks at higher elevations. From there, gravity distributes water throughout the landscape of our education center, irrigating our organic gardens and providing water for use in the dormitory and kitchen.
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Participants during a sustainable agriculture workshop engage in hands-on activities to learn about organic gardening techniques. Biointensive beds are designed to cultivate as many vegetables as possible, in the least amount of space possible. A drip irrigation system that conserves water is layed on top of the bed. Participants learn about composting, seed saving, natural pest control, and diversifying for highly nutritious crops.
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At the Instituto Tonantzin Tlalli, our education center in Oaxaca, we cultivate a variety of crops and demonstrate various agricultural techniques. Nopal, prickly pear cactus, is a staple ingredient in the Mexican diet - it is highly nutritious and easy to grow. In addition to growing a wide variety of medicinal herbs, we organize workshops on herbalism and natural healing. We believe in valuing traditional, local knowledge and complementing it with modern science.
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Ferrocement is a versatile construction technique that uses readily available and affordable materials to build structures such as water cisterns. Workshop participants form a wire mesh into a cylindrical shape and then cover the mesh with a mixture of cement & sand. Ferrocement water cisterns are much cheaper than pre-fabricated plastic tanks and the technique is easy to learn and replicate. Household water cisterns are designed to collect and store rainwater.
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We have adopted an innovative construction technique that reuses plastic soda bottles as "bricks" for building up the cylindrical wall of a water cistern. The women and children in the community recovered over 4,000 used bottles, filled them up with sand, and then participated in the construction process. The cistern was designed to collect rainwater from the roof of a chicken coop also built during a 3 week workshop (on left, naturally built out of rammed earth).
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Men, women, and children from a rural indigenous community in the State of Mexico participate in a workshop to learn how to produce their own food. Two years later, this community produced enough organic spinach and tomatoes to consume internally and sale the excess in a local market, thus increasing their health and family income.
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At the Instituto Tonantzin Tlalli (ITT) in rural Oaxaca, the Group has welcomed diverse groups of people from around the country to participate in residential living and learning experience. When possible, we allocate scholarships for local community members who otherwise would never have the opportunity to learn about appropriate technologies.
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