Creation of a shared vegetable garden in Bogota

Throughout 2022 several members of our team (including several of our young French volunteers) went to the district of Tocaimita, illegally built on the heights of the city of Usme, in the suburbs of Bogota. We know this neighborhood well and we go there regularly as part of our food distribution and environmental education project to fight against poverty, exclusion and the lack of access to healthy, varied food produced in the Bogota region.

Every month we come to the neighborhood to continue our work with the residents, all of whom are indigenous victims of armed conflict and forced displacement. Our goal is to create a vegetable garden in this neighborhood, managed by the inhabitants themselves. In workshops 4 and 5 held on September 17, 2022, our team shared with the community key concepts about forests as stable, syntropic lines, forest stratification, and plant functionalities. By the end of the day and with the help of the inhabitants, we delivered the plants of species such as oak, lavender, blueberries, tree tomato, avocado, marigold and strawberry.

Finally, a knowledge test was carried out on the workshop attendees to confirm if the knowledge regarding edible forests was clear and understood. All the attendees understood that in a forest there are large trees, shrubs and low plants and that the plants give us food, medicine and provide us with wood to build our houses.

Once again, we want to thank our GlobalGiving Community and all of our donors for their support and help.

Stay tuned for our next reports and actions on the field!

The Proyectar Sin Fronteras Team 

Dear GlobalGiving community, 

This Saturday, September 17, we were back in the slum of Tocaimita to continue our work in managing the neighborhood's solidarity garden. Every weekend, the community meets and works to solidify the staircase, to fence the land and to clean the area. We were amazed to see all the work done in two months and we sincerely congratulate the indigenous community of Tocaimita for their involvement and dynamism. The social leader Maria-Elena does everything to revitalize the cultural life of her neighborhood, with the aim to offer the inhabitants better living conditions. 

This Saturday, we continued the cleaning of the land, which is a former open-air dump. Our agro-ecological engineer Jefferson (a clown in his spare time and known for his commitment to the underprivileged) then gave an open-air class. While enjoying the sunshine and tasting cheese arepas distributed by members of the Comunes party, we listened to Jefferson explain how to take care of this garden while following the principles of agroecology (which is to reproduce nature identically).

We then received the shrubs and the plans that we will soon be able to plant! There will soon be avocado trees, strawberries, lavender and many other species in this garden. We can't wait to see the results! 

This work is not possible without your financial support. Each donation represents a new course, a new plant and a new hope for the displaced people of Tocaimita. Support our solidarity projects! Here in PSF, we combine ecology and social issues to make Colombia a better country for all. 

We invite you to support us and to help us to achieve our solidarity goals. 

Thank you for reading !

Yours truly, 

PSF team 

Hello everyone ! 

We hope you are well. In Bogota, we continue our work in solidarity with the most vulnerable through inclusive agro-agriculture. The rainy season seems to be behind us and we can finally return to the slum of Tocaimita. Due to heavy rains and landslides, some houses in this poor neighborhood collapsed last month, leaving several families homeless. 

On Saturday, July 09, our team returned to Tocaimita to continue our work of creating a shared vegetable garden in one of the areas of the neighborhood, which in the past was an open dump. After cleaning the land and starting to build our staircase garden, 

Jeferson Valderrama is the perfect man for the organization of our workshops. He is the one who organizes the classes and gives the demonstrations. This time, the objective of our workshop was to introduce participants to recycling and the benefits of compost. We gave the participants of this workshop two lombri-composters, which they are responsible for taking care of and dispersing the compost both in the collective vegetable garden and for their own production.  

Our workshop was divided into three steps: 

1. Jeferson introduced us to his character, whom he named Pachayaku. Before working with us, Jeff made the decision to travel the continent by bicycle inspired by a purpose greater than his individual interests: to sow seeds of environmental awareness through education. If you want to learn a little bit more about him, you can click here to discover (in spanish) his story and his journey through latin america. Above all, Jeff wants to make people laugh and to raise awareness about the protection of our planet.   
2. We then talked about the different types of plastic that exist in the world and all the recycling options available to us. We have shown that it is possible to generate income from this recycling and that the waste can be an interesting source of money, that it should not be thrown in the nature. 
3. We talked about organic waste, compost and how to best recycle kitchen waste. This compost will then be used in our vegetable garden!  

We are pleased to be able to share our projects with you and we hope that they will catch your attention. Please feel free to read our previous reports and contact us if you have any questions!

Once again, we want to thank our GlobalGiving Community and all of our donors for their support and help.

Please, follow us on our social media to know more about our projects !

We invite you to support us and to help us to achieve our solidarity goals. 

Thank you for reading !

The Proyectar Sin Fronteras Team