Community Center in Chuparipal

Dear donors,

We are pleased to announce that the Chuparipal Community Center in Sucre was finally inaugurated on Friday, June 23rd. We had an incredible opening ceremony, filled with exciting blessings and beautiful speeches. The children of the community delighted us with a dance and a parade of costumes made from recycled materials, demonstrating the creativity and talent of the community.

We once again thank you for your generosity, support, and trust during this journey. You were a key piece in making this project a reality, which will benefit the inhabitants of Chuparipal and surrounding communities. Now, we are excited to begin the new phase of the project, which is the activation of the space so that it can be used by the community and allow them to hold meetings to address the main community problems such as the defense of fundamental and citizen rights, training in skills, carrying out creative and cultural activities, receiving primary medical care, conducting knowledge transmission workshops, workshops for psychopedagogical support, leveling of children and youth, and any other needs that may arise in the community.

Trazando Espacios will be working for one more year together with the community to seek allies and to ensure that the community center is a welcoming and functional place where these activities and events can be carried out for the benefit of Chuparipal. We hope that this space becomes a meeting place for people of all ages and helps strengthen community ties.

Thank you once again for your invaluable support in making the Chuparipal Community Center a reality. We are thrilled to have reached this important milestone and are eager to move forward with the next phase of the project. Your contribution has been instrumental in bringing vital resources and services to this community and we are confident that the center will serve as a vital hub for community development and empowerment.

With heartfelt appreciation,

In January we began the construction of the Community Center in the Paria Peninsula, the most challenging project in Trazando Espacios’ history. 

It is our first building for the common good, as we have only done open spaces so far. It is being built 100% by the local community that have been trained in construction techniques that will help them improve their homes and quality of life. This has allowed us to empower and restore hope to a forgotten society in one of the poorest states in the country.

We have been able to teach and give work to unemployed people in the community. The work has been a catalyst to activate people to join the project, recruiting more than 50 people inside and outside the community.

Like any proper building, we made sure to make a good infrastructure (foundations and brace beams) since we are in a seismic zone, very close to the El Pilar fault. Once this phase was completed, we poured the floor slabs, a very important part for us. When it was ready and dry, we were very excited and we began to build the wall bases with cement blocks to protect the Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB) from humidity. We have produced 800 CEB and we need to duplicate/triplicate that amount in the upcoming weeks. We are proud to say that after three months of testing our CEB recipe with local soil we have passed the resistance tests in the Materials Laboratory of the Andrés Bello Catholic University. 

This week we are assembling the structure (columns and wooden ceiling) of the multipurpose space, and placing the blocks for masonry stairs.

We are happy to report that we are keeping pace with the timeframes established in the project goals. With a surprisingly capable workforce, and good weather in our favor, we will soon be able to see a fully conditioned Community Center which, more than building a space, is going to transform people for the common good.

Additionally, 16 houses regained water supply after approximately three years without it. The baseball field was reactivated, which allows money and visits to be brought to the community. We gave the community the tools to clean the field but inspired by the project we are building, they decided voluntarily to clean it up. Finally, there is already a waiting list for the women of Chuparipal to teach women from other communities to embroider.

We are deeply grateful to you for being part of this project. Thank you for trusting Trazando Espacios and for being kind enough to allow the Chuparipal community to broaden their horizons, allow themselves to dream and have a space to grow both personally and as a community. 

We are still short of resources to be able to complete the construction in June. We need your support to raise an additional $12,000 that will be used to build the roof, the warehouse, medical office and supplies and furniture.

Hello everyone!

During the last three months we have been working hard hand in hand with the community of Chuparipal, integrating and strengthening all the fundamental pieces to prepare for the construction of the community center.

Our local team met with the community to show them the architectural design drawings, emphasizing the importance of doing it under a participatory methodology and building it with local materials. The community was delighted and satisfied with the design outcome. At the same time, a new Civic Organization was formed to take care and activate the new Community Center. The members were voluntarily postulated and democratically elected by the community, they now have a board of directors and they have chosen the name:  Civic Association for Union and Wellbeing. 

 During October and November, we had the opportunity to offer different workshops to the Chuparipal community. The first one about leadership, in which they also discussed the importance of motivation as a motor to achieve the construction of the community center, empathy, good communication and sense of belonging as fundamental pieces to promote the sustainability of the community center. Afterwards, they had a basket weaving workshop among community residents, in which they practiced and perfected new weaving techniques. Finally, a construction workshop in which they learned how to interpret architectural blueprints, how to use the measuring tape and understand scales and proportions in drawings and the most exciting of all: how to make adobe blocks. It was extraordinary how women participated in the adobe blocks construction process taking the leadership with enthusiasm and strength.

We are filled with joy by all the work that we have been able to do in recent months with the community and how more and more people have joined this project.

 Also, we are so grateful because thanks to you we are getting closer to starting to build this dream in January 2023. Although we are a key player in this process, the truth is that none of this would be possible without the help of 463 people like you who believe in our work and methodology. 

We still have $12,412left to raise before March 31st 2023.

So please help us to continue sharing this project!

Dear donors, 

We want to take this opportunity to thank you again for being part of this project.

This August we traveled to the Peninsula de Paria to join our local team in Chuparipal to activate the community for the construction of their Community Center. We organized a participatory design workshop and leadership training for young adults. 

During our Design Workshop, the community participated to build an architecture model representing their ideas for the new Community Center. In this workshop, they learned basic concepts of architectural design and representation skills to express their proposed building design. The invitation was to design an inclusive space that benefits the entire community including health, art initiatives, and educational programs.

This space for the common good will house activities like dance and singing lessons, after-school programs, primary health care, craft workshops, and training for entrepreneurship. All of these are going to help support the needs expressed by the community working in partnership with local leaders and organizations. To learn more about this workshop, download our report.

At the same time, aligned with our mission to strengthen community leadership, a Youth Training Program was organized for young adults, 25% of them young mothers (15 to 20 years old). Concepts such as self-knowledge, life project, human rights, creative writing, community communication, community organizational networks, and networking, among others, were addressed. A network of young promoters was created to lead other activities in their communities.

For the next couple of months, we will be working on the architectural design proposal to have final design blueprints for construction by January 2023 and we will continue promoting community leadership and developing programs for social development. For now, we will continue raising the funds we need to build this dream. Thanks again for your trust and support!

• 220831__Informe_Imaginar_Chuparipal_Abajo.pdf (PDF)
  

We want to thank you for your support in raising funds for our most ambitious project: ''More than a school for Guaruchal''.  Because of your donation, we were able to raise 20% of the total goal for the construction of this great dream. We appreciate your trust, generosity and commitment.

The project has taken an unexpected but interesting turn and it is important for us to share it with our allies. 

The school project began in November 2019 when we received a letter signed by the community in which they expressed the need of an ecological school, built with local materials. Trazando Espacios decided to take on the challenge of supporting Guaruchal in a year and a half.

We developed workshops in which approximately 30 people participated, where they identified the main needs of the community, designed the school they dreamed of and learned construction techniques with local materials such as rammed earth. Additionally, our social development team carried out population and agricultural censuses, house-to-house information activities, community assemblies, and pedagogical support in order to keep the community informed and motivate their participation throughout the process. All this in order to promote the leadership and economic growth of the community and ensure the sustainability of this ecological school.

At the end of August 2021, as part of the closure of the rammed earth construction workshop, joint agreements were established to begin building the school. One of the commitments was the construction of a module by the community, using the technique learned. This space would serve to store tools and put into practice the knowledge learned before starting phase 1 of the project and demonstrate the responsibility of the community towards the project. We agreed to complete this task in one month. For 6 months, the Trazando Espacios team made weekly visits and provided the necessary materials, tools, and support to complete the module. Despite efforts, the community did not fulfill its commitments, only 5 adults helped sporadically.

 On February 26, 2022, Espacios called an assembly to decide how to move forward with the project. Fifty-two adult representatives attended the assembly from different sectors, including sector leaders. This meeting reviewed the commitments, activities and achievements of the organization and the community to date. Likewise, all attendees were informed about the importance of the presence of responsible leadership and the commitment of the majority of the community to carry out a project. However, one group stated that they wanted a concrete school built by external personnel hired solely for this purpose, instead of an ecological school with local materials as they had requested in a letter in 2019. Finally, a vote was held, where only 38% of the attendees (representing 15% of the adults in the community) expressed their commitment and willingness to build the school using local materials and actively participating. The remaining 62% did not express interest or willingness at any stage of the process.

Trazando Espacios's mission is to transform people and spaces through participatory tools, generating identity and a sense of belonging. We are convinced that the sustainability of our projects is only achieved with a leadership that accompanies, empowers and motivates a significant percentage of the population in the search for solutions to the problems faced by the community.

For this reason, Trazando Espacios will use the funds raised to build a meeting place for education and community development in another community in the region. The community will be chosen through a contest by demonstration of willingness to actively participate work hand in hand with the organization.

To begin, we invited three communities to participate: Río del Pilar, Chuparipal Abajo y Las Casitas. On April 21, we presented a document that they must submit before May 2, through which communities were formally invited to apply for a community project that will be built using a participatory design with local materials in the state of Sucre. On May 20th we will announce the selected community to build a new meeting place for education and community development.Through this competition we will ensure that we select the right community to make the most of the resources that have been raised to date and meet the goals promised to donors.

Our organization is committed to the transparent and responsible use of resources. We understand that every project carries risks and in some cases they are high. The work in Guaruchal left the team with great learning that will help us trace a successful route in the community where we are going to materialize this ecological school and in all our projects.