Oaxaca Wednesday: 2009 Highlights and Accomplishments

by Aly Lewis

For Oaxaca Wednesday I’d like to take a minute to share some stories and statistics from our life-changing program in Oaxaca, Mexico over the last year. I've been sending a lot of reports on our Oaxaca program to foundations who've funded us, and, believe me, there is some exciting stuff going on that I just have to share with you.

In 2009 Plant With Purpose expanded its transformational work to four new communities and partnered with 140 new families, working with a total of 540 families in 48 villages in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca.

Plant With Purpose Oaxaca was able to not only continue to provide life-giving assistance to current Plant With Purpose farmers and their families, but also to join with additional families and scale up many of our critical projects, such as family gardens and cistern construction. We have been delighted to watch families experience improved quality of life as they are empowered to become agents of change in their own communities.

Here are some of our program highlights for the year:

• Greatly expanding our family garden program--we were able to help families establish 111 more gardens than we did last year!

• Placing a greater focus on cistern construction, a more expensive but incredibly valuable investment in the health and wellbeing of the farmers. 10 new cisterns were built throughout the year to capture and store rainwater for household and agricultural use.

• Facilitating 14 environmental education classes in primary schools. Through these workshops students learn valuable skills and creation care principles. Students also participated in environmental projects firsthand through demonstration projects that included the use of cisterns to capture rainwater, a vegetable garden plot, and an on-site tree nursery to produce tree seedlings for reforestation efforts.

• Establishing 3 new revolving loan fund groups. In addition to granting loans and providing a safe place for group members to store their savings, these groups also serve as a platform to teach women to improve their reading, writing, and math skills, building their capacity and self-confidence.

• Expanding the reach of our discipleship program by more than doubling the number of Festival of Values events we facilitated in local schools and expanding the “Church, Community, and Change” project to the village Rio Yutanume.

We're inspired by the transformation taking place in our Oaxaca program and look forward to sharing with you even more stories of our progress and accomplishments over the next year.

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Aly Lewis is Plant With Purpose’s Grant Writer. She researches funding opportunities, writes proposals, and submits progress reports on funding received. She also writes the content for Plant With Purpose's Sponsor A Village program.