Protect Food Gardens from Tropical Rains

Chocolá is on the slopes of volcanoes that range along the south and west coast of Guatemala, so it gets a lot of rain throughout the year, but the especially rainy season runs from about mid-May to about mid-November.

Last year, the rainy season brought abnormally heavy and prolongued rains which severely damaged our participants' household gardens.  It took weeks for gardens to be renewed and the plants to grow big enough to contribute their nutrition to family meals.

This year however, even though there were some serious tropical storms, the families were ready:

With your support, Seeds for a Future staff was able to help many participants build toldos -- protective structures -- over their gardens.  We only raised a portion of our total goal, but these funds supported the creation of bamboo structures for the most at-risk gardens.  With a fantastic donation of special greenhouse plastic from Pilones de Antigua, one of the largest seedling producers in Central America, we were able to supply covers for all these structures.

Each family's garden is different in shape and size, custom-built to fit the space available. We are very proud of the cooperative work between our team and the participating families; they had to be very creative "engineers" to construct toldos that would do the job!

THE RESULT?  This year, families have had an uninterrupted supply of delicious and nutritious greens and other favorite vegetables such as chilies, celery, onions and beets. 

We are glad to thank all who were able to help support this mini-project.  Even though it has been "retired", there are still many families which need protective toldos for their gardens.  You can continue to support the families of rural Guatemala via our main Global Giving projects, Fighting Malnutrition in Rural Guatemala (http://goto.gg/13523 ) and Clean Kitchens and Cooking for Nutrition (http://goto.gg/14550 ).

Regards,