For the past two weeks MPI Ecuador has been hosting 3 Oxford University students who have been working exclusively with our Small Business Development program. Here is an update from Taylor on how things have progressed during their visit:

Since last October, the Small Business Development Program has eagerly anticipated working with Oxford University’s Oxford Microfinance Initiative. We’ve been working on the preparation for their arrival for months now and I cannot believe it’s all over!

The British came…they saw…and left with an incredible amount of information and insight into Rumiloma and its surrounding communities. We did field studies, visited lesser known parts of our surrounding communities, met with countless governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and exhausted ourselves in pursuit of the question: how can expand and improve our business program? Manna’s vision focuses on really getting to know what interests our communities, in order to execute the best possible programs suited for these communities. It’s nice to get back in touch with the community and really be able to ask them what they are looking for from us.

Our team of Oxford students consisted of three people…although ironically, only one member, Bhavin, was actually British. Vera hailed from Germany and spent a year in Riobamba, Ecuador, living with an Ecuadorian family from 2010-2011. Her insight into Ecuadorian culture and business practices was a huge help. Dennis is from Switzerland, he spent a year traveling all over South America, learning a good deal of Spanish and experiencing Latin American culture, but this was his first time working in Ecuador.

This opportunity to really focus on our business program, with the help of three knowledgeable business students was exactly what the program needed. We’re really hoping to invest our newfound knowledge into the Small Business Development program and see how we can expand and build upon what we’ve learned. We’re all very excited to see where it goes from here!

This past weekend we had 5 days off for Semana Santa, also known as Holy Week. Ecuador PDs split up for this holiday, traveling all over Ecuador and the US.

Our Country Director Darcy went to Guayaquil to visit friends (she spent a year living in Guayaquil before working with Manna).

Watkins’ mom was visiting for the week and they spent a night on Cotopaxi and then traveled to the Oriente, experiencing an extreme change in altitude and climate. They also got to witness some of the elaborate religious processions that took place in Quito on Friday.

Rachel was home in Chicago visiting family for her birthday and her niece’s (which both happened to fall during the holiday). Feliz Cumple Rachel!

Emily was lucky enough to spend a few days in the Galapagos with her mom and brother who are visiting. Her family is still in town so they have gotten to see and help out with some of our programs here as well.

Nicole, Charlie and I took a long bus ride to Cuenca for the weekend. We expected it to be a little more lively, but found that most of the city was shut down for Semana Santa proceedings. We still managed to have a great time walking around the city, sitting by the river, and drinking lots of coffee. Charlie got to try Fanesca, a typical dish in Ecuador during this time of the year, and Nicole and I managed to find plenty of suitable vegetarian options.

Taylor stayed in the Manna House to keep an eye on things and continue a work project that the Small Business Development program is working on with some Oxford University students who are currently staying with us (more on this soon!). She also got to try some homemade Fanesca, specially delivered by our friend Ivo.

We all had a lovely and much needed vacation and now we are ready to take on the end of the quarter, which will be very busy for us in Ecuador.

About a month ago Nicole and I started attending therapeutic horseback riding sessions with Antorcha de Vida, the rehabilitation center for special needs children where we work weekly in the gardens. Working with and riding horses is said to benefit communication, motor skills, and social skills, as well as teach companionship, responsibility and confidence. The kids at Antorcha love horse therapy as well as the Captain in charge, an Ecuadorian military officer who has special needs children himself. They place their complete trust in him, letting go of their grip on the horse to clap their hands when he says to, and laying down across the horse’s back, eyes closed in relaxation.

On Thursday mornings after working in the gardens with the Ingeniero, Nicole and I help to pile the kids into the back of a pick-up truck and we travel together to the military training facilities where they offer therapy. Some of the kids need extra guidance and attention, while others know exactly where to go and can’t wait to get there. They take turns riding the horses around a big green field, trying different riding positions, waving their hands in the air, throwing disks to help with motor skills, or just hugging the horse to feel its body temperature. Nicole and I take turns walking around with the horses, providing extra support in case someone starts to slip. When we aren’t accompanying the horses, we hang out with the other kids who are waiting for their turn. Although they all enjoy their time on the horse they aren’t impatient at all, rather they sing and dance and make jokes, seeming to genuinely enjoy every minute. It is amazing to see some of the kids who can’t even walk on their own riding the horses without a hint of fear.

Last week we got the chance to share this experience with a few of the spring breakers from UGA. Margaret found the horse therapy to be especially rewarding (read her blog post by clicking on the UGA tab). Working with the kids at Antorcha has been a beautiful and rewarding experience. They are so free with their hugs and their trust, it is impossible not to love them.

Today we said goodbye to the last of our UGA girls, wrapping up the spring break season in Ecuador. The past two weeks have flown by for us and the house feels eerily quiet and empty without all the extra people around. I want to thank all the volunteers from Vandy and UGA who chose to spend their spring break helping us and the people of the Chillos Valley. It was great for us to have some extra sets of hands and hear some fresh perspectives on our programs. Read about the spring break trips by clicking on the Vanderbuilt and UGA tabs, and check out this video made by Kelsey Schmidt from UGA!

Yesterday Rachel, Nicole and I ran in Conocoto’s first annual women-only race in honor of this week’s International Women’s Day. We have been excited about this race for a while, especially since we are in the process of planning our own Manna 5K to take place in June. This was the perfect chance to see a small, local race in action, and to talk to the people who planned it all. We got to witness how everything was organized and executed and made some connections with the group in charge. The race was really great to see, I had never run in a women-only race before and it was cool how many women participated, and how many men and other family members were there to support them. We had our own personal cheerleader, our neighbor Caesar, who was kind enough to drive us to the race at 7am and wait for us at the finish line. After the race they put on a big bailoterapia demonstration (dance aerobics, kind of like zumba) in the main park in Conocoto. We had a good time watching the festivities, and were able to get a lot of great ideas for our own race.

In other news, the three of us also traveled to the airport last night to pick up our new group of spring breakers from UGA! The Manna House got an extra 10 girls for the week and we PDs have several extra sets of hands and some fresh perspectives to help us out with our programs. The UGA girls will be blogging throughout the week, read about their experience here.

Today we said goodbye to our first group of spring breakers (read about their trip here) and invited all of our Adult English and Nutrition students over to the Manna House for lunch. This is something we have been wanting to do for a while now, and it was a huge success and a great time. After our midterms this morning we closed the library a little early and headed home with everyone to finish preparing the food. Emily and Taylor’s Nutrition and Cooking students brought ingredients to make a few salads and our English students collaborated with soda, chips and desserts. Everyone was extremely helpful with the cooking, setting up, and cleaning up.

We love hanging out with the adults that come to the centro, and have been trying to come up with ways to spend more time with them. This was a great chance to get everyone together, invite them to see our house, and spend time together outside of the classroom setting. The weather cooperated for the most part and we were able to spread out outside as well as in the house. Some of the students set up a makeshift Ecuavolley match while others taught us a new card game inside. It was the perfect way to unwind after a long week of work, eating good food and speaking Spanglish with our students. This is the first time we have had so many students over at once, but we hope to make it a more common occurrence.

It all started when Taylor and I were sent on a wild-goose chase to find a nearby elementary school where we could possibly hold nutrition classes. Our first encounter with the directors of Chaupitena was brief and rather disheartening.

The director seemed to be very wary of these strange new gringas in the area and a little uncertain of our proposal in general; but we were persistent, and our next meeting with him had a completely new tune. This time, we met with him as well as the heads of Naural Sciences, Vilma and Elvia. The two women were much more open to our idea and were excited for the opportunity to present nutrition curriculum to their students. This was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Since our initial meetings with Chaupitena, our programs with them continue to grow. We completed our first 12-week nutrition curriculum with their 8th, 9th, and 10th in December and are currently holding nutrition classes with their three 7th grade classes. Not only has Chaupitena been an excellent opportunity for the nutrition program, but it has also brought many new faces to the library. We have several Chaupitena students and teachers enrolled in our English classes this quarter, and the teens from our original classes make up the bulk of our teen center participants.

When the older students realized we were finished with the nutrition curriculum they got upset and seemed legitimately concerned that they would never see us again. Luckily we have found a new way to stay involved with these students that we already know and love.

A newly added program with Chaupitena involves our Preventative Health Center Team: Charlie, Watkins, and I. We give monthly health charlas (talks) on topics of their choosing. So far we have had classes about mental health as well as alcoholism and drug addiction. In a future class, we hope to have our friends from the Red Cross assist us in teaching some basic first aid to the kids. These health charlas have been a wonderful opportunity for our preventative health program and also a great way to maintain our relationship with the older students of Chaupitena.

What started as a ‘shot in the dark’ meeting with a potential partner organization has grown into so much more. The teachers and students of Chaupitena have become an integral part of our programs here in Ecuador as well as some very close personal friends.

Elvia and her family came out to support us at the FDR

We look forward to continuing our relationship with the teachers and students of Chaupitena. Coming up in April the Agriculture Program will also be getting involved, giving a PHC Charla on the benefits of organic gardening!

Sorry for the slight delay, here is an update on our Carnaval long weekend:

In the spirit of Carnaval we let our Adult English students out a little early last Saturday so they could catch some of the parades that were happening around the valley. We are lucky enough to live right next to the Sangolqui parade route, which means that on holidays (which happen pretty often here) our bus route is interrupted and we have to walk part of the way home from the centro. I had no idea what I was in for when I got off the bus alone and started walking the last 10 or so blocks to the Manna house. There were people everywhere, spraying foam, throwing water and eggs, and covering each other with colored powder. I was defenseless, and my blonde hair doesn’t exactly allow me to blend in with the crowd. By the time I reached the monument near our house and saw the friendly face of our neighbor Caesar, I was drenched.

Rachel had arrived home about a half hour before me, and under similar circumstances. We decided to change our clothes, buy some foam off the street, and take revenge! We found Caesar, who was more than happy to walk around with us and show us how to play Carnaval. After an hour I was exhausted, rainbow colored, and soaking wet. I retired to take a shower and Nicole joined in the fun. The two of them went on to experience other Carnival parades (or as they described them, wars) in the Valley while the rest of us headed to the coast for the long weekend.

Carnaval on the beach was much more tranquilo than it had been in Sangolqui, though that isn’t to say that we didn’t get hit with plenty of dirty water. The majority of taxis on the coast are these small carts pulled by motorcycles, which are open on all sides. While riding from the bus station to our hostal we passed a group of kids armed with buckets of water. They were thrilled when our cab slowed down to make a turn, and took advantage of the opportunity to drench us and our backpacks… it was a lovely welcome to Atacames. Luckily we were sweating from the steamy coastal climate and didn’t mind too much. Even though we made easy targets, we managed to make it through the holiday, running, screaming, and occasionally fighting back.

It started off slow, confiscating empty balloons and water guns from kids in the library. We returned them at the end of the night, understanding it is all in good fun, but water and library books don’t mix. Having never experienced Carnaval in Latin America, we didn’t really know what to expect. The games seemed harmless enough… and then I got hit in the face with shaving cream. Although the holiday doesn’t officially start until this weekend, the high school kids are already out in full force and I cower in fear as I walk home from the bus. The common tradition during Carnaval in Ecuador is to throw water, powder, eggs, shaving cream, silly-string and hair dye at friends and unsuspecting strangers.

While walking to the bus yesterday I ran into two of my former English students, high-schoolers in uniform just getting out of school. They approached me with hands behind their back and asked me if I like to play Carnaval. The answer was a firm no, and they laughed at the desperate look on my face as I begged them not to hit me with anything. I watched from the bus window as they launched eggs at another group of high school kids across the street. So far we have been spared (for the most part) from any real damage, but the games are just beginning. The majority of the group is headed to the coast for the long weekend and we will surely come back with gruesome stories and photos to share. Until then, wish us luck!

It started off slow, confiscating empty balloons and water guns from kids in the library. We returned them at the end of the night, understanding it is all in good fun, but water and library books don’t mix. Having never experienced Carnival in Latin America, we didn’t really know what to expect. The games seemed harmless enough… and then I got hit in the face with shaving cream. Although the holiday doesn’t officially start until this weekend, the high school kids are already out in full force and I cower in fear as I walk home from the bus. The common tradition during Carnival in Ecuador is to throw water, powder, eggs, shaving cream, silly-string and hair dye at friends and unsuspecting strangers.

While walking to the bus yesterday I ran into two of my former English students, high-schoolers in uniform just getting out of school. They approached me with hands behind their back and asked me if I like to play Carnival. The answer was a firm no, and they laughed at the desperate look on my face as I begged them not to hit me with anything. I watched from the bus window as they launched eggs at another group of high school kids across the street. So far we have been spared (for the most part) from any real damage, but the games are just beginning. The majority of the group is headed to the coast for the long weekend and we will surely come back with gruesome stories and photos to share. Until then, wish us luck!

We started off the party in the kitchen, handing out recipes and working together to make healthy snacks. We listened to music and chatted while preparing the food and allowing latecomers to trickle in. While the women ate, Emily and I gave a charla on the healthy way to lose weight, tackling the nutrition and healthy diet aspect as well as the importance of exercise. In order to promote our exercise program, we put on music and each gave a 3-4 minute demonstration of our various workout classes. Some of the women who have been to our classes before joined in on the demos while the others watched, cheered us on, and took videos.

After the demos, dripping with sweat, we discussed our plans for the next few months, which include a 5k race in March and a potential 4-week bootcamp to help prepare for it. The women were really interested in our ideas, and gave tons of valuable feedback and suggestions. We listened to questions and comments, and then ended the party by handing out health related articles that pertain specifically to Ecuador. Everyone seemed pleased with the get-together and thankful for the information. We had a great time hosting, and are looking forward to our next fiesta solo para mujeres!

Discussing the importance of healthy diet and exercise

Gigi and Paola joining in on the Zumba demo

Taylor leading the class

Nicole discussing proper weight-lifting form

We have a big week coming up so we are all busy preparing, making phone calls, and advertising, advertising, advertising! Next Saturday we are hosting our annual community celebration, Fiestas de Rumiloma (which we lovingly refer to as FDR). This celebration is a great chance for us to meet new people and really expand our reach in the community. We are inviting all of our partner organizations and other local foundations to come, give demonstrations, and hand out information. Local food vendors will be selling snacks, and the president of Rumiloma is set to give a speech.

Preparations for the celebration have included traveling all around the valley and into Quito to deliver invitations, hunting down a bounce-house, DJ and sound equipment, and talking up the event to everyone we meet. We are hoping to bring in a record number of community members and boost interest for our classes, which start on January 24th. This will be our first major community event, and we are all really excited to see how it turns out. There are lots of exciting things happening here in the next few weeks so stay tuned for more updates and pictures!

Happy New Year everyone!

MPI Ecuador is back from vacation and ready to start a new quarter. While some of the PDs returned to the States for the holidays, others stayed to travel around Latin America and visit with friends and family. Four of us traveled to Peru before Christmas and hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. We spent four days walking in the footsteps of the Incans, sleeping in tents, visiting ruins, and hearing the rich history of the area (not to mention carrying 20lb backpacks). We finished the hike exhausted and sore, but the experience was definitely vale la pena. Two of our PDs visited Guatemala, Taylor traveling with Jesse and Fiona (Nicaragua PDs) and Watkins with his mom after a trip to Belize.

Nicole, Rachel and I got the opportunity to spend New Years Eve in Ecuador, which was a very different experience than we were used to. A few days before the holiday we started to see these almost life-sized dolls called año viejos spring up on doorsteps, in storefronts, and tied to hoods of cars. These dolls are made to look like famous people, politicians, or family members, and represent the year that is passing. In Quito they hold huge competitions to see who can make the biggest and best año Viejo and win a cash prize. At midnight on New Years Eve family and friends gather in the streets to burn the dolls as a way to get rid of bad luck and negative energy from the past year.

All throughout the day busses were stopped in traffic as random fireworks went off and guys dressed up as women begged for change at stoplights… not something you typically experience in the States. These “women” are supposed to represent the widows of the año viejos who will be burned at midnight.

A friend of ours Christian invited us to spend the evening with his family in Selva Alegre, a neighborhood nearby, so we got to experience all of these rituals first hand, along with an explanation of their meaning. We wore red underwear (for love in the new year) and jumped over the fire where they burned an effigy of Christian’s younger primo Gabo. Although slightly overwhelmed by all the new traditions and superstitions, I think we succeeded in securing ourselves a lucky, love-filled and prosperous 2012.

Really excited to see Machu Picchu

They’ve spent the afternoons hanging out in the library, getting to know the niños, and sitting in on our classes. They helped us put the final touches on our plastic-bottle Christmas tree and practiced their Spanish while playing Egipto with the kids. The girls raised money for the trip to go towards some of our program needs. We took advantage of this extra funding and the extra sets of hands to build some new, sturdier aerobic steps for the women’s exercise class. The volunteers came up with the new design, took a trip to Hiper Market to get the supplies, and spent Wednesday hammering and gluing away. The steps are a huge improvement from the ones we made a few months ago, and now we have enough for a full class.

After the centro closed on Wednesday night we all hopped on a bus to Quito for some Great Indian Food (their cooking is better than their creativity) and the girls got to experience a little salsa dancing in the Mariscal. Some of the volunteers got to see the Chaupitena nutrition class, and accompany the kids on a fieldtrip to the Añamisi’s organic garden. Others stayed at home finishing up the steps and helping to prepare our Thanksgiving dinner (round one for the PDs). We were all feeling a little homesick being so far away on the holiday, so it was nice to come back from the centro to a home-cooked feast. After dinner we all sat down to de-brief and to get the girls’ perspective on our programs and the Ecuador site overall. It was a great chance for us to chat about the experience, discuss some of our challenges, and remind ourselves of the many rewards. The week flew by for us in a busy blur, but we want to thank the UGA girls for their positive attitudes, suggestions, and hard work.

The UGA girls painting the library

Although we are far from home for the holiday, we find ourselves among family and with many reasons to be thankful. I am thankful for this amazing opportunity to travel and to experience the richness of the Ecuadorian culture. I am thankful for the chance to teach and learn from the beautiful people in the Chillos Valley. I am thankful to the community of Rumiloma for inviting us into their hearts and homes. I am thankful to my fellow PD’s for sharing in this unique experience. I am thankful to all of our supporters (both financial and emotional), and to the UGA girls for choosing to spend their holiday with us.

For most of us it is our first time being away from home for Thanksgiving. Here in the Manna House we have decided to ease our homesickness by celebrating twice. We will have one feast tonight with our UGA volunteers (though slightly less extravagant since we are all working today), and a second Thanksgiving on Sunday with some of our friends and loved ones in Ecuador. We were able to find a reasonably priced Turkey (I hear Nicaragua wasn’t as lucky?) and will all be cooking our favorite recipes to share. We hope everyone at home is enjoying the holiday and we will share pictures of our celebrations in a few days.

Happy Thanksgiving from MPI Ecuador!

Antorcha de Vida is a rehabilitation center and educational facility for special needs children, located right down the street from our house in Sangolquí. The directora Nancy is a wonderful, hardworking woman with a huge heart. Noel introduced me to Nancy my first week in the Manna House in an effort to keep up our relationship with this wonderful foundation. This woman was so sweet, welcoming, and passionate about her cause that I immediately started brainstorming ways we could get more involved in what they were doing. She took us on a tour of the facilities and showed us the beautiful organic gardens that are planted and maintained by the children, their mothers, and the women who work for the foundation. Nicole and I decided to expand our Agriculture Program to volunteer once a week during their agricultural workshops. We are only able to give them an hour and a half of our time on Thursdays, but we are learning a ton about organic gardening. The women are so sweet and appreciative, and working with the niños has been an amazing experience, as well as a lesson in patience.

The kids at Antorcha de Vida have a variety of mental and physical handicaps, which they work on through different types of therapy. We spend the morning helping them pull weeds, water the plants (and often ourselves in the process), and look after the gardens. Keeping the kids occupied and interested in the work can be a difficult task, and our extra sets of hands are definitely useful. One of our favorite kids, Michael, has a problem with his legs and needs to hold onto someone for support when he’s walking. He is in the process of learning to walk on his own, but sometimes gets too excited and needs to be reminded to slow down and take it one step at a time. The kids really seem to enjoy working in the gardens, and love to show us the handfuls of weeds they pull.

My favorite part of the experience is listening to the Ingeniero tell stories (often the same ones) about the political history of Ecuador, the medicinal properties of eggplant, and his grandsons in Miami. This 80-something year old engineer stumbled upon Antorcha de Vida one day, and has been sharing his agricultural expertise with them ever since. His secret formula named MBO (after him of course) is an organic, chemical free, fertilizer that keeps diseases and pests away from the crops. This mixture has done wonders for the plants there, and the women continue to pester the Ingeniero for his recipe. Unfortunately for them, the secret is just for him and his nietos in Miami.

The Ingeniero can recite the same love poem in Quechua, Spanish, and French… but can’t remember our names. He affectionately refers to us as the Señoritas Extranjeras and after several failed attempts to correct him; we have decided to let that one slide. Listening to his stories is an incredible way to learn about the country, and about organic gardening. This man knows everything there is to know about agriculture and herbal remedies. So whether we are mixing secret organic formulas with the Ingeniero, or just walking back and forth with Michael, volunteering with Antorcha is always a beautiful experience.

Aside from sampling cultural fare and learning about Ecuadorian traditions, the four-day weekend provided the opportunity for PDs to travel and explore Ecuador. One group of PDs, including Emily, Charlie, and country director Darcy made a long trip to the Amazon rainforest in “el oriente” to see its exotic biodiversity. Another group of PDs, including Watkins, Heather, Nicole, and Rachel, chose to stay behind and explore places near Sangolquí. With the accompaniment and guidance of a couple of our adult English students, we discovered a former lime mine in the heart of traditional Quechua land and also hiked to “la gran cascada” of Rio Pita, which is the highest waterfall in Ecuador.

On the first day of the Sangolquí-based adventurers’ vacation, the group of PDs accompanied English student Nadia Torres on a work-related trip. Nadia works as a photographer and journalist, and is helping write a book about the history of Sangolquí. Our trip began with a bus ride along dirt roads to a small town called Tolóntag, near where we hoped to find a mine from which lime (cal) was taken that was used in the construction of the plaza of Sangolquí. Nadia, being a journalist, procured us permission to visit the mine and some general directions from the town’s mayor. While Nadia worked her magic, the PDs made friends with some locals and were gifted with maqueños, a kind of plantain with a reddish peel and peach-colored fruit. In our casual conversation, we were told that children from Tolóntag traveled an hour each way to school every day. We also noticed that the Spanish spoken in this small town differed markedly in pronunciation from what we’re used to, a difference Nadia attributed to the Quechua tradition.

With permission, vague directions, and a hired camioneta (pick-up truck), we embarked down a rocky road until the driver bade us farewell and we began walking. We enjoyed good views of hills and volcanoes, and after a while encountered a family working a field of crops near the road. After pleasantries, the adults had their children guide us to the site of the former mine, where we had lunch and took pictures, and laughed at our guides’ antics. The kids were intrigued by our accents and happily showed us the former mine, which is now a thermal pool of water, and other sites near their farm. We ended our trip that day by returning to Sangolquí and having ice cream at an heladería next to the plaza of Sangolquí.

Hey everyone, I turn this week's blog over to Profe Nicole for a Children's Art update:

Children’s Art is one of our programs that operates almost entirely off of in-kind donations. To date the art program has not spent a dime for any of our classes. Each week, Taylor and I spend time researching traditional and popular forms of art from various countries; we then take these projects and themes and adapt them into something we can do with what we have: a finite art supply shelf and the short attention span of 5-10 year olds.

We chose to start this quarter by working our way through different countries in Asia. At the beginning of each week I start getting the question, “Profe, qué vamos a hacer en la clase de arte?”, but our eager students never get the answer they want…Taylor and I usually claim that we haven’t the slightest idea or turn the question around on them and so they continue asking us and every other profe in the vicinity. Each class starts with a slideshow about the country we are studying, which often contains more pictures then facts – appealing to that attention span! – but it’s always fun to hear them pronounce the names of the capitals, cities, and buildings, try to claim they can read Hindi, and see the information they retain. After explaining the Chinese calendar and animal for each year, we figured out who was born under which animal; Matias was so excited to find out that he was born in the year of the dog that he continues to include drawings of dogs in every other art project we’ve done, constantly reminding us that he was born “en el día del perro” – close enough!

This past week guest profe Charlie and I mixed things up a bit and got the kids out of the classroom and doing a project that for once they couldn’t take home. The country of the week was India, and I had previously asked help from a friend in the states, Dolly, whose family is from India. After struggling to narrow down the incredible and extensive list of cultural traditions and ideas she gave me, we decided to focus on the Peacock – a sacred bird in Indian culture – and traditional chalk drawings. Despite the typical rainy season schedule that called for rain at 3-4 in the afternoon, the weather was perfect for an outside art project. Some kids used designs and peacock pictures I had printed out, but most of them just went at it…working together and using their hands, elbows, and feet to mix colors and color our sidewalk nothing short of awesome.

After class I came back upstairs and immediately told Heather that we have to add sidewalk chalk to the online wish list. If our students had half as much fun as I did, we might be out there everyday!

The Children’s Nutrition program got a fresh start this year since MPI and Alinambi (last year’s nutrition school) decided to discontinue their program. This turned out to be a great thing as with the help of an influential community member we were able to make a new connection with a great school in Santa Isabel. The teachers at Chuapitena (the new school) welcomed Emily and Taylor with open arms, giving them a full load of five classes to teach each week!

In addition to teaching classes about the food pyramid, food cycle, food safety, and nutrition-related diseases, Emily and Taylor also include some basic English vocab into their lessons. They have been meeting weekly with a few of the teachers from Chuapitena to give them a preview of that week’s lesson and offer them an opportunity to ask nutrition and health-related questions. They also have plans to do a cultural exchange of recipes with the women, one week cooking a healthy recipe from the US and the next week a traditional Ecuadorian dish. This relationship with Chuapitena has brought many new regulars to the library and teen center, as well as new students to our English classes.

Emily and Taylor have also made some great changes to the Cooking program, transforming Saturday’s cooking class into a combined adult nutrition charla and healthy cooking lesson. Each class is about two hours long, beginning with a health discussion and followed by the preparation of a recipe that relates to the discussion topic of the day. All of the class participants help to prepare the food, and take home a copy of the recipe to use with their families. They changed the time of cooking class so that it occurs after Adult English on Saturday, giving our English students a chance to participate. Attendance has been increasing each week as more and more English students stay after to help out, and 10^th graders from Chuapitena join the class to learn more about the cooking aspect of nutrition. All of these changes have been very beneficial to MPI and to the community we serve. Thanks Emily and Taylor, keep up the good work!

When school started up again in September the Teen Center attendance suffered greatly. Some of the older regulars have classes in the afternoon, after school activities, or too much homework to come and play video games. Just when Charlie, Watkins and I were starting to get concerned about our program, the library party gave us a huge advertising boost and brought a swarm of new faces to the teen center. With several of Emily and Taylor’s nutrition students now frequenting the Centro, we can once again bother nearby English classes with sounds of Mario and bouncing ping-pong balls.

Profe Joaquin has started teaching some of the teens how to play chess, which has been a huge hit. Steven, a 12 year old from nutrition class has been to the Teen Center every day since the library party and is always begging to play. It is an awesome game for them to learn because of all the concentration and thinking ahead it requires. It is also great to see them turn off the video games for a while and doing something more mentally stimulating. Surprisingly, the teens have also gotten very excited about making bracelets. Since we re-organized the Center and left out string to make jewelry, it has been a new favorite activity. Nothing makes my day like having teenage boys beg me to help them make friendship bracelets.

We decided to re-instated monthly movie nights, which the teens are very happy about. Although we wish they wouldn’t always pick bad horror movies, the profes enjoy it as well. We decided to alternate every two weeks having either a Friday night movie, or some other organized weekend activity. Last Saturday we took the teens on a paseo to Parque Carolina in Quito, to meet up with Profe Ashley who ran the teen center last year. We lucked out with a rain-free afternoon and got to spend a few hours playing soccer, skateboarding, climbing trees, and eating cookies in the park. We were joined on the trip by two of our Adult English students and friends Walter and Evo who also wanted to see Ashley, and get out of the valley for a while. While attendance wasn’t quite as high as we were expecting (many teens signed up but then didn’t show up) our first teen center paseo was a success. For the next paseo we are going to try and stay a little closer to the Centro so that more teens are allowed to come. We have some exciting things planned for the Teen Center in the coming months so stay tuned for more updates!

As Ecuador’s new team of program directors gets into full swing with classes and programs, I feel that it will be helpful to give everyone on the outside a brief overview of Manna Project’s theoretical foundation, because while this is a blog about our daily lives, our work and many of the daily micro-decisions we make are influenced by the theory underlying our organization. What follows is a brief summary of asset-based community development, the theoretical paradigm under which MPI Ecuador was founded, and which continues to influence our behavior and decisions as an organization.

Asset-based community development can best be described as a way to help people help themselves. It is an approach that involves discovering existing organizations, resources, or capacities within communities that can be leveraged to improve the conditions of individuals and of the community as a whole. One of the most important goals of development under this framework is the empowerment of individuals and of the community, making people “more likely to take control of aspects of their lives, to plan for their future and deal with economic uncertainty, to support their children’s educational achievements, and to work to ensure that the lives of the next generations are better than their own,” in the words of Melvin Oliver¹, a past vice-president of the Ford Foundation.

To empower individuals, our Manna site was founded with the cooperation and support of local leaders and an Ecuadorian partner organization in the San Francisco municipality. Since then, Manna has expanded its service beyond San Francisco and now operates a library and community center, which was developed as a response to the community’s assets and the desired outcomes of our work, as stated by individuals in a community-wide survey. Manna still relies upon collaboration with local organizations and the participation of community members in order to build trust and be aware of other development within the community. One of the local organizations we support is the Red Cross Ecuador (La Cruz Roja Ecuatoriana), by volunteering time when they need volunteers, as detailed in a recent blog. This past summer we also hosted a summer camp in conjunction with Añamisi, an organic farming cooperative, with whom we continue to work. We also have individual local volunteers who spend time at our Centro helping with our programs. La Cruz Roja and other organizations that we support are important assets to the community because they are already established organizations. By supporting them, we are upholding one of the principles of asset-based community development by avoiding “the fragmentation of efforts”², or competition with organizations that already do good work and have a strong foundation. Furthermore, by promoting the goals of local organizations not in competition with us and enlisting the help of local volunteers, we hope to spur a cycle of activism and empowerment within the community.

Being involved with local Ecuadorian actors is important to our work, because although we try hard and are often successful at communicating with and understanding community members, volunteers from the same cultural background as the people we serve is an easier and more effective way for us to build trust and legitimacy. By involving local community members and helping other local organizations, we hope that people in the community continue to see that we are genuinely trying to help them and give the them a stake in the process, instead of seeing us as outsiders with pretensions of being able to drop in and solve the their problems, an unfortunate occurrence for some international development efforts. By forming relationships and being involved in the community, we can, and are, seen for what we really are: motivated young people with a desire to change the world in a positive way.

1. Oliver, Melvin. Assets for the Poor: The Benefits of Spreading Asset Ownership. Ed. by T.M. Shapiro and E.N. Wolff. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2001. Pg. xii.

2. Kretzman, John P., and John L. McKnight. Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. 1993. Pg. 4.

On Friday we held a Fall-themed party in the library to celebrate the start of classes and to attract some new community members to the Centro. The party was a wild success (slight emphasis on the wild) largely thanks to the students in Emily and Taylor’s high school Nutrition Classes, many of whom were first timers in the library. We estimate that a total of 70 kids and teens were running around the library and teen center at one point or another during the party. Our modest food preparations didn’t stand a chance… after 3 hours of preparing Fall-themed snacks, everything was gobbled up within the first half hour. Bobbing for apples was a huge success (and a huge mess) as kids with dripping wet faces raced to the back of the line for another chance at winning a prize. After lots of preparation and lots of excitement, we PDs were thoroughly exhausted. Although the chaos probably chased away any adults who might have attended the celebration, the kids certainly enjoyed themselves and we expect to see lots of new regulars in the Centro.

The Chase Community Giving Competition has ended and the official results are finally available. Unfortunately, MPI did not win our division and will not be moving onto the next round, but we did finish a respectable 3^rd behind some other well-known nonprofits.

Also, we would like to send a special thanks to the following individuals, organizations, and networks, who kindly promoted Manna Project during the competition:

v Pencils of Promise

v Brad Corrigan, of the bands Dispatch and Braddigan, as well as his own nonprofit Love Light & Melody

v Catchafire

v Lacrosse the Nations

v Our Time

v Razoo

v ORPHANetwork

v Giving Matters

v Spark Microgrants

v Other Places Publishing

v The US Center of Citizen Diplomacy

v Building Bridges Coalition

v Spark Microgrants and the Local Solutions Forum

v Matthew Perryman

v The band Relient K

v The band Jars of Clay

v Alongside Ministries

v Members of Save the Children's Corporate Partnership team

v Duke University's Center for International Development

And all of our friends who endured our relentless pressure to spread the vote.

While we are of course disappointed to have not moved on to the next round, we are sure that the publicity Manna has garnered during this competition will serve us well in the future. Having visibility is an important component for nonprofits to grow and receive funding, and with more than 10,000 votes, it is certain that MPI has increased its visibility both in the U.S. and in Ecuador.

Manna Project has been invited to participate in the Case Community American Giving Awards for a chance to win a MILLION dollars! This is an incredible opportunity for us and we could really use the funding. The contest is simple; it all comes down to Facebook voting. For the first round we are competing against just four other organizations in the youth development category. We have one week to beat out the other four and move onto the second round. If we advance to the second round we automatically win $125,000 and we have the chance at a million!

We won before, we can do it again! In 2009 when Chase first started their Community Giving Awards MPI won $25,000 so we know it is possible, we just need your help!

Voting lasts just one week, from September 28^th- October 5^th.

Just follow this link it only takes a few seconds and could help us make a real difference in the communities we work in.

You will be prompted to “like” Chase Community Giving and then have the chance to vote up to 5 times for MPI to beat out its competitors.

Help us even more by posting this link as your status on Facebook and Twitter so we can reach out to as many people as possible.

We will keep you updated throughout the voting process, thanks for all the support!

Now those are two things worth celebrating. These past two weeks have been a big deal for Sangolqui and the surrounding towns in the valley as they have been holding various events to celebrate their annual festival of Maíz y Turismo. We Program Directors have had the opportunity to collaborate with the Ecuadorian Red Cross during some of these events. We are lucky enough to live right next to the Monumento de Rumiñahui, a large statue of the famous Incan warrior for which our district is named. The festival’s parade route ended right in front of the monument, and a majority of the festival’s events happened just a short walk away from the Manna house.

Last Saturday’s parade was a bigger event than any of us had expected, with roads closed off all around the monument and thousands of people crowding the streets (this made getting to the Centro a difficult task). During the event, I had the pleasure of volunteering in the Red Cross tent where I was taught how to give an IV… and then given the opportunity to practice on a fellow volunteer. Luckily for everyone involved, I was never called upon to use my newfound skill. The parade lasted hours, with a continuous flow of musicians, indigenous dancers, Sangolqui beauty queens, and small children dressed like corn. Since people from all over the district showed up for the parade, we had an awesome opportunity to mingle with community members and spread the word about Manna Project.

This weekend’s Corrida de Toros (bullfight) was another story altogether. Traditional bullfights in Spain involve trained Matadors and skilled horsemen collaborating to kill a bull. There is a lot of controversy over the sport, and in some parts of the world it is prohibited to kill the bull in front of the crowd. Sangolqui’s toros give the bulls a chance to fight back. A few days before the Corrida a makeshift ring and stands are constructed out of wood and… what appears to be socks, to hold the bull, the participants, and hundreds of spectators. Unarmed, untrained Ecuadorian men (and once in a great while women) enter the ring with the bull to try their hand as amateur bullfighters, or just for the thrill of being close to such a powerful animal. Participants antagonize the bull and then run terrified for the stands when the bull starts to chase them. Props to our very own Nicole Hamilton and our friend Evo Vaca for being the only mujeres to enter the ring this year. Although it is very entertaining to watch, people do get badly injured during the festival. Needless to say, volunteering with the Red Cross this weekend was a very different experience than helping out during the parade. Our future health care professional Emily was thrilled at the chance to help the injured toreros, and has spent the last three days helping out in the tent. I on the other hand saw enough the first day and have officially retired as a Red Cross volunteer.

Some very happy corn

The academic year is fast approaching for MPI Ecuador. I do not mean that any of the recent college graduates that make up the new team of program directors will be enrolling for classes, however. Instead, all of us will soon be assuming the role of teacher, a frightening and ironic thought to any of us who have ever been sent out of class for being disruptive but colluded with other disruptive classmates to avoid punishment from the teacher (definitely not me). Collectively, we will be doing our best to impart our gringo accents to our English students, inspire creativity in young art students, demonstrate healthy cooking techniques to adults, and motivate women from the Chillos Valley to master Zumba routines in women’s exercise classes. But before the fun can begin, a certain amount of work is required of the teachers-to-be, and this work is also the subject of this week’s blog. In the lead-up to classes, which begin on September 13^th, the new team of program directors has been walking the streets of the Chillos Valley making MPI’s presence known and advertising our fall classes. In the process we’ve had our share of laughs, shrugs, and reasons for optimism.

Even the best ideas require marketing before they catch on. At MPI Ecuador we think that the classes we offer are at least “very important” for the communities we serve— so it’s important that we find ways to advertise what we offer. However, our options are limited by the lack of widespread Internet access in the communities we serve. No matter. This week each program director has taken part in what in reality may be the best form of advertising for us: approaching strangers on the street and explaining to them about Manna Project and the classes we offer. To maximize our reach, we divvyed up all of the different municipalities that Manna Project serves in the Chillos Valley, and with flyers in hand, sent a pair of PDs to each community to advertise our English, cooking and nutrition, children’s art, and women’s exercise classes.

The PDs already take buses to our Centro in Rumiloma as well as everywhere else we go, and this proved to be a valuable platform for reaching large numbers of people. My compadre Charlie and I took turns standing at the front of the buses speaking loudly about MPI and our classes, while the other passed out flyers to the people seated.

In San Pedro, a smaller and less dense municipality in between Rumiloma and Sangolquí, we targeted families with children as we walked around, introducing ourselves as volunteers from a nonprofit organization, and briefly describing MPI’s classes and services. Often our approaches were met initially with confusion or suspicion, but we were encouraged that most people appeared piqued afterward, and almost everybody accepted our flyers. Once, after chatting with a group of people gathered around a grill on a street corner about their interest in our English classes, a woman responded that “No entendí tu lenguaje.” We recovered from her not understanding our Spanish by countering, “So now you know that we can definitely speak English.” Like the other program directors, Charlie and I talked to many people during our walk-around, and gained permission from several storeowners to leave information in windows. We ended our advertising campaign in good spirits, discussing how the people we were recruiting would probably be taking the same bus to the Centro that we do.

Making the rounds in the communities we serve is important for more reasons than simply increasing participation in our programs. By talking to people and gauging their reactions, the experience was both an exercise in communication with the very people we are trying to serve, and a reassurance to these people that our intentions are sincere. My experiences talking to strangers and being pushed out of my comfort zone this week gave me a heightened sense of purpose and enthusiasm for our work, and I believe the rest of the team shared this experience. Speaking on behalf of all the current team of program directors, I am excited that our fall class offerings will soon begin and hope to see in the Centro with us some of the same faces from the streets that we walked this week.

Hi, my name is Daniel Ajoy and I go to the Manna library at Rumiloma as often as other obligations allow. I enjoy very much playing and teaching board games to the kids there, because I remember the times when I was bored at home when I was young, as these kids are, and I didn't know how to use the game pieces I had, to play with my brother and sister.

The library has a few board games the kids are free to play with. I imagine that all of the games were donated with all of their components complete. They are in shelves accessible even to the younger kids, but through the months of use and exploration, many of them have lost pieces or have broken ones. From what I've seen, the most resilient games are the ever popular Uno, and Othello, because the board is sturdy and the pieces are identical and abundant, so if some of them get lost the game is still playable. Candyland wasn't so lucky; the library has two sets but the pieces representing the children going through the Land of Candy, the "pawns", are gone. We have a nice set of thick black Dominoes... but it lacks three pieces.

I was pretty amazed to find a set of Blokus there. I had heard very good things about Blokus before, that is good for a group of 2 or 4, that it is simple to explain, and deep, and that it was a good introduction for kids to abstract board games, but alas, when I opened the box I noticed that quite a few pieces were subdivided and some were missing, too. Still, I have seen it used many times. As kids don't know what the original rules of the game are, they use the board as canvas and the broken pieces as colorful assembly shapes to create figures and scenes they imagine.

There is a set of plastic Chess pieces with what looks like a Dungeons & Dragons theme, missing a black Knight. And a broken Connect Four which left behind many black and red Checkers-like pieces. which could probably be used with the two or three children-size tables with painted Chess boards on them.

I usually go with a bag that contains:

· two Piecepacks, which are generic sets of pieces: numbered tiles, numbered coins, dice, and pawns.

· two bags of many nice-looking glass beads

· one bag of buttons in four colors

· a white set of Dominoes

· a deck of regular cards

With the pawns we have been able to play a few games of Candyland, changing the rules a bit so that it's not just a matter of taking a color card from the top of your stack and moving you pawn to that spot in the track through the Land of Candy, but having each kid manage a hand of three color cards, and make decisions about which card to play next. This rule change was suggested by Tom Vasel in this video.

With the glass beads we have played Breakthrough on the Chess tables, I think it is a very nice simple game to play with the kids, but the problem is that it is just for two players. I'm trying to find games for more players that use the Chess tables and we have tried Pente and Halma with the colored buttons. The kids have enjoyed both. Also with simple buttons, glass beads and pawns, we have played other multi-player games like: Veleno (which we call "Help your friend"), Poison Pot, Pandora's box and Yavalath. For those a simple printable board was needed.

I realized that the incomplete black set of Dominoes had enough pieces to play an adaptation of Raj, we use those pieces and a deck of regular playing cards, and each player gets all the 13 cards of a suite, so with one deck up to 4 players can participate. Playing cards are relatively cheap here, and I'm still trying to find simple, yet novel games to play with them. We have played Army Ants, Sequence, with a printable board; and Eleusis, but in its Express version. I think kids would benefit from playing more Eleusis (which I presented to them as "Nature against Scientists") but I suspect they don't appreciate my representing Nature every time, and they don't yet have a sense of what good rules are, to play as Nature themselves affectively. However, their favorite card game is Egyptian Rat Slap.

With the Piecepack tiles we have explored games like Hey, That's my Fish!, Penguin and The Secret Door. With the Piecepack dice we have played: Can't Stop and Pickomino (which they usually just call Worms). And lately we have tried more sophisticated adaptations like: Way of the Dragon, Forbidden Island, Royal Racers and Cloud 9 (which we call "7 Heaven" and we assemble with Piecepack components, a Dominoes set to indicate "cloud points", and origami dice)

The idea of using origami dice came from the desire of playing fun games with what we have at hand, paper for example. We use origami dice to play Sushizock im Gockelwok, and regular notebooks and pencils to play Dots and Boxes which in Ecuador is called "Galleta" and Sprouts. I still want to show them how to play Racetrack with more than two players, but that looks like an all-boys game, so I'll wait for the right opportunity.

It would be nice to have generic sets of Dominoes, dice, cards and color tokens at the library, so that kids can play the games rules we learn on their own.

Thank you Daniel! The PDs and the niños genuinely appreciate your help!

I Y Montañita

Hola! This is Heather, as Noel mentioned in her last post I will be taking over the Blog for the 2011-2012 year along with Watkins, who will be arriving in Ecuador this coming Wednesday (Yay Watkins!). It is hard to believe that us new PDs have been in the country for almost a month already, but we are really starting to feel at home! After spending the first two weeks living with host families in Quito and brushing up on our Spanish, we were excited to move into the house and get to work. With the support and guidance of last year’s PDs we were able to get our feet wet at the library and start getting to know community members. It has taken us no time at all to adjust to life in the Valley. We have quickly discovered how to mount moving buses and fight back when they try to charge us an extra 2 cents for the ride to the Centro. We also have survived our first week of summer camp!

We were all a little nervous to see the herd of 5-10 year olds waiting impatiently in the library on the first day, but they quickly warmed our hearts and we have had a blast playing with them all week. From the youngest camper Miguel who always has a smile on his face to our oldest Dayana who is a wiz at U.S. geography, the kids have really made us Profe’s feel welcome. Today we took the kids on a paseo to the Museo del Agua in Quito. The museum trip reinforced what our partner org Añamisi had taught the kids about the importance of water, where it comes from, and how we can protect it. The niños enjoyed playing in a giant bubble room and getting splashed by the fountain after lunch. It was a long series of bus rides into the city, but most of us were able to catch a little siesta on the way home… and we will surely sleep well tonight!

"Profe dice" also known as Simon Says