Welding a brighter future in a remote part of Argentina

Only about 150 families live in the Independencia neighborhood of Argentina’s remote La Banda municipality. Everyone here faces a number of challenges, but young people are particularly feeling the weight of unemployment and not having training courses or ways to build skills. That’s why a group of young people took matters into their own hands in 2017.

With help from some of their neighbors and the municipal government, they started a garden and a place to make and sell concrete blocks. The income from these activities support a metalworking workshop that offers work and training to young people.

But they didn’t stop there. In 2018, the group applied for a Communities in Action grant. CWS and our partner CREAS offer these grants to groups in Argentina and Bolivia like the one in Indepedencia. We look for programs that are helping women or youth as well as their larger community. Their proposal was accepted, and they received the grant of 50,000 Argentine pesos (just over $1,100).

The group members used the grant to purchase new equipment, increase the training that they offer and market their products. “We had a few tools, and with this grant we acquired some key elements to make our activities more productive,” says Janvier Villanueva, a 29-year-old workshop member. “We streamlined tasks and improved working conditions by buying protective equipment like masks and gloves.”

They used the money to help train other young people in the neighborhood, too. “We carried out four training sessions on metal mechanics and assembling blocks for schools in the area,” Janvier says. “We also trained women who are responsible for community kitchens and the secondary school on how to produce ecological ovens.”

Abigail, 24, is a mechanical metal technician and is studying social work. She’s one of three female members of the workshop and affirms how important the workshop is to the community. “The dynamics of the workshop mobilized the neighborhood,” she says. “Now they know us everywhere. Communities in Action was the impetus we needed to grow and improve. The guidance and economic support that this program gave us helped us a lot to direct the proposal.”

In July, the team had a tent to sell their products at a major artisan fair in a nearby city. “We feel privileged to participate in this fair,” says Jorge, another workshop member. “It is an important opportunity because we can offer our own products and make ourselves known.”

In addition to the workshop members, another four young people have received training at the workshop and gone on to find other works. Each one now has a salary, and they say that their time at the workshop helped prepare them for their careers.

Taking care of their families by cleaning up their neighborhoods

Fifteen women walk the streets of Villamontes, Bolivia, early in the morning. They spend about five hours each day collecting and separating recyclables from nine neighborhoods in the center of the municipality. Each month they collect about seven tons of plastic, glass and cardboard; that’s an average of more than 450 pounds per day. This program helps the women earn an income for their families.

One of them is Getrudis Plata Oliviera. She’s 46 and a single mother of four children. She was worried about how to support her family, and she was also concerned about the problem of garbage in Villamontes. Getrudis became the leader of the Chañat neighborhood board in 2013. She was among the women who formed a group dedicated to environmental education of residents and getting asphalt on streets. “In 2015, the mayor of Villamontes called the neighborhood councils to see who could do something to address the municipal waste,” Getrudis says. “This group of women organized ourselves to help.”

Getrudis and her team trained 60 women from Villamontes in solid waste recycling. “We saw that we were capable of making it a business,” Getrudis says. “Fifteen of these women continue to collect and separate waste, and now we are entrepreneurs for recycling in Villamontes.” The women convinced the municipality’s regional sub-government to lend them a baler to compress the plastics, and they also got a piece of land in Chañat three years ago for a collection center.

CWS teamed up with the women in 2017. The entrepreneurs applied for a Communities in Action grant, which CWS and our partner CREAS offer to groups like theirs that support families and benefit the common good. Their proposal asked for help improving and strengthening their collection center.

“The biggest problem we faced was the lack of security,” Getrudis says. “We had to take care of the wrapping machine and make sure that strangers did not come in and steal or make a mess of the collected waste. With the help of Communities in Action, we closed the old center, and now we have a safer place where we can work together in peace. This place is like our house—we spend a lot of time here cleaning and selecting waste.”

“We no longer have to take turns standing guard at night,” says vice president of the initiative Silvina Ramos. The women no longer have to worry that someone might get in and cause trouble, nor about one another’s safety and integrity.

CWS and CREAS recognized the innovative work that these women are doing, and we want to help encourage similar initiatives in other cities in the Bolivian Chaco. That’s why the women also got a Communities in Action grant in 2018. This grant is for improving the hygienic conditions in the collection center and for helping the women get a legally-recognized status for the center. This status will help them enter other programs and initiatives.

“Since we have started working, we have seen the amount of garbage in the streets get reduced by 80 percent,” says Getrudis. We are proud to support these women and this program, which helps them support their families and means a healthier, cleaner environment for all their neighbors.

Climate change is real: helping Indonesian farmers understand and adapt to climate change

“The weather is unpredictable now,” says Buttutasik, a farmer in his 50s in Bau village in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

“This leaves us feeling confused: some of us continue planting our seeds, knowing we are risking crop failure from weather change and pestilence; others of us are reluctant to plant at all for fear of losing our crops,” he noted. Buttutasik is the chair of the Harapan Lembang Bau farmers’ group in his community. “What we need the most is information about the changing weather patterns, and [modern] weather forecasts to guide our decisions on whether to plant or not. We never had such information – until we joined DREAM,” he says.

Buttutasik is right to highlight unpredictable weather changes in Indonesia. In fact, erratic weather has put farmers nationwide in a difficult position. Our team keeps hearing from farmers that they are no longer able to understand and predict weather patterns using local wisdom. That led CWS and a local partner, Pusbinlat Motivator – a DREAM team of sorts – to launch an initiative to help farmers access information and technology to help them understand the effects of climate change and changing weather patterns.

Importantly, DREAM is helping them adapt. In explaining how the project is working for him and his group, Buttutasik says, “I joined the land conservation training workshop, where we learned how to observe weather patterns properly; how to use information from agricultural extension workers effectively, and how to use modern gauges to measure rainfall. All this information can help us plan for the next planting season, including what crops to grow.”

“We also learned how to make and use organic fertilizer and an organic pest control mix to help maximize crop quality and replace chemical pesticides,” he added.

As the group chairman, Buttutasik is responsible for 24 members; as such, he says he grateful to join DREAM education and training activities adding, “Even though I am already 54 years old, I am not too old to learn new things and help improve [my own and my group members’ lives]. We hope that we can improve our living standards with our new knowledge; that we can become part of a community that maintains and preserves our land and water; and that we can raise awareness in our own community, Bau, about the benefits of organic fertilizers and pesticides.”

This initiative is made possible in part by generous support from Act for Peace.

A new partnership grows in Timor-Leste

Like most of his neighbors, Paulinho Martinez makes a living by farming and raising animals. Traditionally, he has raised his animals in the rainy season and focused on farming in the dry season. “In the past, the May to November dry season has been my time to hustle,” he says. “I would start selling the animals I raised during the rainy season, and I started planting the vegetables I knew would get a good price at market.”

Since it was the dry season, it wasn’t a time when the rain would keep Paulinho’s crops watered. “I had to haul the water to irrigate the vegetables from quite far away,” he says.

When the CWS Timor Zero Hunger program came to his community recently, Paulinho seized the opportunity to improve the way he farms. “I have learned so much from CWS staff about more modern farming techniques than I have used in the past, including why and how to plant a more diverse crop, and working with plants during the rainy season,” he says. As part of the program, Paulinho is now leading two Farmer Groups. He and his neighbors have teamed up to start communal gardens, experimenting with growing new types of vegetables in new ways.

“I am grateful for the experience to lead these groups; it is a big responsibility for me,” Paulinho says. “I am glad I get to share this information with others. I want to do well for my community; but, sometimes, when we face problems, it is hard for me not to get stressed about it.”

When we asked him what types of problems the group is facing, he took our team into one group’s communal garden. At the moment it’s lush with rainy season produce: tomatoes, bitter gourd, morning glory, corn and pumpkins. But over by the edge of the garden, Paulinho stops and points out the problem. It’s a row of half-dead vegetable seedlings. It was supposed to be a row of healthy Asian cabbage.

As Paulinho looks solemnly at the cabbage, he explains, “This was our first time planting Asian cabbage, and we are sad it didn’t grow. But we have figured out that it didn’t grow because of the land.” He grabs a stick and starts turning the soil around one seedling to show that it is now thick mud. For this vegetable to grow, “the land must hold moisture; but, in this plot, the water doesn’t absorb well. So, we have decided to wait until dry season to add compost to improve the soil and plant the remaining seeds and expect some success.”

As we chatted with him near the garden, Paulinho told our team that the Farmers Group didn’t plant all of the seeds that they received from CWS. There’s a real strategy here, and it reflects the fact that CWS is the first outside support many villages in this area have received. The group is cautious and manages their resources carefully. “We didn’t plant all of our new seeds because we wanted to test the new varieties along with some new farming practices,” he explains. The group doesn’t want to completely rely on outside help. Paulinho says, “We remembered that we know how to stand on our own. And, we thought it was important for us to save some seeds, which we did.” Now, in addition to planting the Asian cabbage seeds in better soil next year, the group wants to learn how to save seeds from the vegetables they already grow. Their plan will help them continue to get by, and maybe even better than that – with a little help from some friends.