Help 350 families grow food to overcome COVID-19

Dear Supporters,

We are really pleased to be able to share with you the progress we have made with our project. There have been some ups and downs and some complications linked to the health crisis but we are pleased to announce that we have completed the first community design of the food garden of the Villa Arauco sector of the La Pintana district, one of the most vulnerable in Santiago. This garden will initially count with the participation of 10 families mostly conformed of highly empowered and entrepreneuring women of the community who have been highly active in all the steps of the process.

The design created with the families includes 125m2 of planting beds, set up in such a way as the optimise and make the most of the space available in the community centre but also ensuring a high level of accessibility to people with different levels of mobility, including raised beds. These beds are considered to plant various crops that will be rotated according to harvesting times and seasons. The community also chose to include one section with medicinal plants and culinary herbs that can benefit the community as well as a border of native trees and shrubs, to promote pollination and create shade, as well as some fruit trees. 

We have already held the first workshop focusing on the topic of soil and how to maintain and promote a nutritious soil in the food garden and are happy to announce that this coming Friday 9th of October, we will be carrying out together with the community the final touches to the garden and will plant the first seedlings and trees! We are also pleased to share with you that in this project we have also partnered up with Comida para Todos who will supplement the food garden and related workshops with a cycle of cooking and entrepreneurship courses to help them generate not only produce for self-consumption but also as a potential source of income through the production of high quality homemade conserves or other yummy treats. 

Once completed and after an evaluation of improvements that can be made in the process, we plan to start before the end of the month the process with two other communities in order to set up as soon as possible the food gardens there.

We share with you some pictures of the workshop, the ladies leading this community and the progress so far and plan to share with you the photos of the inauguration soon too!

Thank you for your support,

Hope you are all well,

Cultiva Team and the community of Villa Arauco