Newsletter: ¡Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!
- Joshua Holmes
- Apr 28, 2023
- 3 min read
The following is an El Terreno newsletter published on 28th April 2023
Phew, what an intense month! We have just taken a well-deserved break after 2 amazing weeks with these young volunteers.
Interns have also been leading the way with tourism and socio-cultural projects. Read on to find out more!
Joshua Holmes
Founder, El Terreno
From England to Ecuador
As you may have read in our last newsletter, we spent most of March working hard to transform the local abandoned school into accommodation for a 24 young volunteers from the UK.
Well, they have been and gone, making a meaningful difference in the community: providing local employment, participating in community workshops and making important steps forward in the renovation of an abandoned building for future visitors and family income.
But as well as working hard, we also had a lot of fun! On the weekends we also took trips to the Salinas Chocolate Festival, Guaranda, the Jungle in Echeandía, and finally, Chimborazo Volcano!
¡What an amazing 2 weeks!
Thank you to all involved for making this possible
Congratulations to all the teams who participated and a massive thanks to Eddy for bringing people together for this positive cause. Photos and video to come in due course!
Intimate Local Stories of People & Place
Naomi Ohman, El Terreno Culture & Anthropology Intern in early 2023, has experienced many issues around the marginalisation of indigenous groups and immigrants in Bozeman (USA), where she lives.
To understand the situation from a different perspective, she undertook a 13-week research project in Guaranda, to help understand the importance of home to the local population of Guaranda, where there is now a high rate of migration.
After extensive interviews with 28 people, she was able to draw together several threads around culture and environment, in which she condensed in writing a children's story.
It's a mythical tale of a local boy who goes in search of the help of Taita Chimborazo when his childhood forest is cut down and grandmother water goes away.
It was so well received by children in our English classes, we decided to get a local illustrator, Guido Chavez, to create a sketch and turn it into a mural, which the volunteers painted on the school during their visit.
Watch the series of interviews online; to hear more about Naomi's process through her presentation, click the video below below.
If you want to make a difference through a hands-on project, while developing your professional skills alongside trained professionals, get in touch to arrange what an personalised internship might look like for you.
Taking Inspiration from Community Success
Reinventing the wheel can be a slow and painful process - and while in many ways we are trying something new in Atandahua, there are many who have walked similar paths before who we can learn from.
One of the best examples of community tourism is Yungilla, who over the past 25 years, have transformed their village from unsustainable deforestation into a thriving project; including volunteering, tourism, reforestation and hand-made produce.
At only an hour from Quito, Karina, Liam and I took a break from El Terreno to spend some time learning from some of the key community members of how the programme has been so successful.
Some valuable insights to take back with us to Guaranda!
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