Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Getting going in La Palma

I've been in La Palma for about a month now and things are going well. I've made some friends and have even started a project and taught an English class. All and all not bad. Normally in the Peace Corps the first 3 months of service are really slow. There is not a lot of activity and for the most part you are just getting to know the community, making friends and seeing where there may be some need. My community is a little different since I'm taking over for another volunteer and we have some overlap which has made my entry a lot easier. La Palma has seen 5 volunteers so far and I'm number 6 so you say Cuerpo de Paz and everyone knows right away what you're talking about. This is both a positive and negative thing. I'm happy to be here and the people are very welcoming, however, the town has learned well over the years all that the Peace Corps has taught and they really seem to be doing really well. I'm sure I'll find my way.
I wanted to talk about a project I'm starting with some ladies who own/operate a vivero (nursery). About a year ago these ladies received a grant from the municipality of La Palma to reforest a section of the rain forest near La Palma. With this money the women were able to reforest the section of rain forest and also start the vivero. At this point they have a large number of trees, but not really any marketing or sales going on. I was thinking that we could start selling trees to people outside of Costa Rica and then the women would go and plant the trees in a section of rain forest that needs to be reforested. Each person who bought a tree could indicate which type they would like to buy and would be sent a picture of their tree being planted and then as time passes sent pictures of progress made in the reforested section. The women are committed to helping the rain forest and I know there would be plenty of people who would also like to help to actually reforested the rain forest. We are just in the starting stages of the project and trough this I will be able to teach the women how to use e-mail, word, excel, accounting and hopefully some English. I'm pretty excited to see how it all goes. It at least is a start.

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