Today is my last day at Ecocomal, the clean cookstove factory whose social tourism project I have been working on this summer. I bought 20 choco-bananos (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and peanuts that cost ten cents each) for everyone at the factory, and am having a hard time concentrating on this blog post with them in mind!! The tourism project I have worked on for the past six weeks was truly the best internship experience I have ever had. All in Spanish, with a ton of independence and accountability, I have never felt so passionate or worked so hard on a project before. Working 8 am until 5 pm every day, with an hour break for a delicious lunch almost always consisting of eggs and beans, I created a tourism program (website and marketing plan) from scratch that will connect tourists in Antigua with families throughout Guatemala that need subsidized clean cookstoves. Other than days spent creating the website and writing up plans in the office, I spent most of my time doing field research for the tourism program. From going along to deliver stoves to families, to talking to tourism agencies and hotels in Antigua, to collecting testimonies from families that have received stoves, I loved being able to interact with such a wide range of people. The tourism project has not been launched yet (it is the low season for tourism in Antigua, and we still have to find someone to give and manage the tours for a long period of time), but I feel confident that all the research, website-making and program development that I have done has set up the basis for an easy launch. Leaving Guatemala at 4 am on Tuesday will be extremely bittersweet. On one hand I’ve eaten more corn in 7 weeks here than I have in my entire life, and am excited to re-expand my food horizons. On the other hand, I have established myself with my host family, community and factory here in San Antonio, and tearing myself away from the routine that I’ve become so comfortable with will be sad. All in all, I am very proud of all the work I have done with Ecocomal, my Spanish has exponentially improved, and I’ve met a stunning number of passionate, inspiring people during my time here. Thank you so much to StoveTeam, Ecocomal, and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves for such an amazing summer opportunity. Check out: 1. The Ecocomal website! www.ecocomal.wordpress.com (English) www.ecocomalguat.wordpress.com (Spanish) 2. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstove/StoveTeam blogs I wrote for http://www.cleancookstoves.org/blog/summer-internship-taps-social.html http://www.stoveteam.org/newsletters/2014-07-july-newsletter
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July 2nd Hello one and all! I’ve been in Antigua/At EcoComal for almost two weeks now, and feel like I’m settling into a real routine. My host family, extremely religious (against dancing and drinking and very concerned with the fact that I am not evangelical like them) is comprised of a single mom and her two sons- I get along with them great, and we have been watching all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator movies in succession. They speak no English, so my Spanish has improved exponentially! Last week was a little weird because my arrival happened to coincide with a group of student visiting EcoComal from Oregon, but my semi-being part of their group for a week was a great introduction to what I’ll be doing. The Oregon students were at the factory to help build stoves, and though they had excellent intentions and were extremely friendly, their week long trip to Guatemala brought the word “voluntourism” to mind. Even though the work they did was helpful to the factory, the effort that it took to set up their visit, and the money they spent to come to Guatemala could have been put to better use. That being said, I hope that no one sees my work as being too similar to voluntourism. Granted I am here to learn Spanish and gain work experience, but by staying two months and not coming in a massive group, I hope to create something that will continue to have a positive effect after I leave. After last week’s orientation, I have started to gain momentum on the tourism project I’m working on. The project is based on the fact that Antigua has hundreds of language schools where a lot of tourists come every year and that EcoComal (the nearby clean cookstove factory I am working for) has an enormous wait list of families that can’t afford clean stoves. Ideally, language schools in Antigua would have groups of students pay for a family’s cookstove, and in return, students would get to speak Spanish with the family and cook typical Guatemalan food on their new cookstove. The brochure is done, and I am about to head off to the first language school to see if they would be interested in a partnership with EcoComal. I am very excited about the prospect of leading these tours, and am proud to be working on such a cool project! We’ll see where it goes! Below is a sample of the brochure I'm working on:Hello everyone!
Since I got home in early May, I have been interning at the Lubuto Library Project in D.C., where I am working to create a new catalogue of books for a brand-new library that Lubuto is building in Zambia. Lubuto is an excellent organization that builds beautiful new libraries in partnership with the Zambian government, that are later owned and operated by Zambians. With very few overhead costs, local ownership and staffing, and sustainable training programs, Lubuto is an excellent example of an international NGO that makes a positive, locally-supported impact. For the past month and a half, seeing the U.S. side of an international development organization has been eye-opening, but I am tremendously excited to do more hands on work in Guatemala. The leading cause of death of children under the age of five in is inhalation of toxic smoke from open cooking fires. Open cooking fires emit billions of tons of greenhouse gasses, inflict debilitating burns on women and children, and require massive amounts of trees to provide fuel. Ecocina, the organization that I will be working for this summer, has factories all over Central America that sell and produce clean cookstoves. These clean cookstoves consume 50% less wood and emit 70% less carbon dioxide than open cooking fires. Ecocina factories (started by Nancy Hughes) have taken off around Central America, and each new factory that opens is run by locals. I will be based at a factory 20 minutes outside of Antigua, Guatemala, working for Marco Tulio. Marco has been wanting to start an ecotourism project for a long time now, and I am thrilled to be able to help in any way I can! From what I have grasped from our lengthy email exchanges, each cookstove costs 60$ to make, and families, though expected to pay a portion of their stove, still have no way of paying for the entire stove. Marco has charged me with connecting his factory with the tons of language schools, hostels and hotels in Antigua, and creating tours for which foreigners will pay for a stove, and in return will get to see the beautiful area his factory is based in, as well as get to cook a meal with a family on their new stove. A lot is up in the air right now- I am not exactly sure where I'm living, I've never talked face to face with Marco, but I can't wait to get started on this awesome project! |
Elena BellElena is interning this summer at Ecocina in Guatemala. Archives
August 2014
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