Fr. Joe Fitzgerald share a YouTube video explaining how the “Semillas de Esperanza” groups work together to build a better future for their families in an area where more than 90% of families live in extreme poverty. Central to the program is the agricultural project that involves formation gatherings, group work, family seed loans, animal breeding, tool sharing and “village sample farms”. Through a synthesis of traditional indigenous ngóbe practice and the best practices of organic methods today, we are developing a new model of “Alternative Ngóbe Agriculture”!
The organic methods are taking hold and the participants are very excited to begin the next crop cycle in 2012.
Additional projects such as latrines, rain water harvest systems, mud stoves and reforestation help the participants combat the conditions of extreme poverty, malnutrition and constant sickness in which the families live.
In 2012 we hope to raise enough funds to test economical SOLAR LIGHT KITS in one the villages, which will open great new opportunities. All of our villages are off the electric grid. Candles and gas lamps are dangerous and battery lighting is expensive. We have tested an affordable light kit (under $100.00) in our chapels throughout 2011. The kit includes the solar panel, cables and lighting with integrated battery.
The road is not always easy and there is a lot of work to be done. But we step forward with faith in what is possible when we put our lives in God´s care and our hands to the soil.
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Help make 2012 a year of hope for the Ngóbe!
For more information or to help support the Project, please visit…
http://sites.google.com/site/ngobemission/-semillas-de-esperanza-seeds-of-hope
Tags: Change, ngobe, Panama, Seeds of Hope, Systemic change
