Sustainable Rural Life

Dear friends of Sustainable Rural Life program,

Here an update of the project:

Fundraising for a community center in Querétaro

This semester we will focus our efforts in supporting Chitejé del Garabato, a rural community located in Amealco de Bonfil, Querétaro. Social and environmental problems of Chitejé include poverty, land erosion, deforestation and pollution. Good news is that there is that a local leader called Sofia Aristeo contacted us to help her build a community center! We have previous successful experience with the group she represents distributing ecotecnholgies back in 2011.

Now, with help of our new NGO-partner Semillas de Vida A.C., we are looking forward to build the community center that will benefit 50 families directly by providing a space to conduct training workshops on efficient agricultural practices based on the growth of native seeds, use and building of various different ecotehnologies, sharing knowledge of traditional medicine and building micro tunnels for the production of organic vegetables and amaranth. With this project, rural women won´t have to go to the city to take training workshops and will be able to sell their healthy products to obtain a better income.

Scaling up successful experiences to new sites

In collaboration with our partner Túumben K'ooben, we are currently fundraising to scale up the successful community–owned model of distributing ecotechnologies into three new Maya communities located in the Yucatan Península. With this project we seek to promote the use of ecotechnologies to improve family health and domestic economy conditions and reduce deforestation, biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions. The plan includes training workshops and follow-up sessions in the communities on the construction and use of clean cooking stoves and solar ovens.

Social impact

SRL program is producing a positive impact not only on the environment but on the social cohesion of the communities we work in. We need your support to increase the number of ecotechnologies in rural homes that can change the life of rural women and youth in Mexico!

Thank you for your interest and support,

Dear friends of Sustainable Rural Life,

Remember that we recently installed 100 clean cookstoves in Tehuacán Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve and ten more at remote indigenous community called Atlequizayan, in northern Puebla? Good news is that at the beginning of March we did a supervision visit to make sure the families were using their stoves properly. The results were outstanding!

First we visited Atlequizayan and we interviewed the beneficiaries with the translation support of the community leader Cirila. Only one woman had some trouble with her stove and we are currently doing everything we can to sort out this problem. The other nine women were extremely happy with their stove, now they don´t have to go every two days to collect 30kilograms of firewood, they now use less than half of what they used to!

Next day, we went straight to San Pedro Tetitlán, Tehuacán. The ecosystem is completely different, it is a desert ecosystem so the clean cookstoves are a different model and better adapted to areas where firewood is very limited. We went to visit 15 houses and all of them where using their clean coostove. Only two of the women are still using their open fires along with their clean cookstove. This is because they thought that the new stove was only limited to tortilla making but now they realized it can be used for every meal.

We also had a meeting with the local assembly. They made us notice that there is a very high demand of clean cookstoves in the region. A surprising finding was that the community primary school located inside the biosphere reserve has included environmental awareness lessons in their education program. This is great news because young kids become aware of the importance of ecosystem services and share the knowledge at home!

This 2017, Sustainable Rural Life will focus on empowering sustainable community centers and strengthening productive initiatives that allow communities to have a healthy lifestyle while protecting their environment.

We need your support to increase the number of these ecotecnologies that can change the life of rural women in Mexico!

Thank you for your interest and support,