Zapotec Post-Earthquake Reconstruction | Oaxaca MX

Hi there! It has been a while since the last update. In Una mano para Oaxaca (UMPO) we have noticed that “uncertainty” is the general diagnosis of Planet Earth, but here we are sharing with you beautiful news that have returned happiness to our hearts. 

After COVID-19 started and the lockdown turned to be normal, we were very worried about finding a way to continue our workshops. As you know, the communities in which we work are still being rebuilt, the psychological effects of the earthquake are still deep. So this halt in our lives, because of the economic recession and the threats that isolation poses to a indigenous community, comes with a lot of challenges. 

We adapted our workshops to the needs of our people. We are focusing our efforts in the traditional knowledges that allow us to have food sovereignty and strengthen our immune system. All what we teach can be applied from our houses, we use the flora of our territory and the local products to create medicine and our own food. 

These last months we learned about family backyard gardens for self-consumption, avoiding fruit waste with conservation and fermentation processes, natural pharmacy at home, femenine health and herbalism for women. The results have been awesome, we have adapted workshops to an audience even larger and more engaged than the one we worked before the cuarenteen. 

The key for this to work, is that we are using a semipresencial way of teaching for people who don't have the possibility to access digital media,  and also, that participants who have access to digital media and internet are sharing it with others who don't, by their own initiative. 

We are very proud to share this achievement with you, because the actual vulnerability of communities is providing a positive side for making  stronger ties between women, creating new work-from-home cooperatives and reducing hunger in the zapotec region. 

Today, 92 new women have joined the UMPO family, and we dream together to build more opportunities for everyone. 

Thank YOU for making this possible.

PS. Thanks to all the support that we have received from you UMPO won the Rural Youth Innovation Awart in Latin America and the Caribbean (link below)

Links:

• Rural Youth innovation award
• Avoiding frutal waste with UMPO

Hi there, we are very happy to share what is going on with our community during these days. Although the international situation has been very difficult because of COVID-19, we are trying our best not to suspend every activity. We had to stop most of them, like many others have had, and we are trying to adapt our interventions in the community to the actual needs respecting security measures for personal safety.

That’s why we started the project “Solidary speaker”. We adapted a speaker to the UMPOmovil, and we drive across the community sharing messages of joy, poems, songs, stories and health recommendations, both in spanish and in zapoteco (our native language). All of the shared audios, are sent in by friends from within and without the region. ¡You can send yours too! The objective is to provide courage to people from our community through the confinement, and to strengthen our bonds in spite of the lengthy lockdown and the lack of visits. We believe positive emotions such as humor, love and hope boost our immune system.

You can listen to some of the audios we have shared in the links below.

We are also joyous to tell you that before the confinement started, two of our favorite workshops met their goal. Two groups of women learned a new craft, which could empower them as a new mean of productivity.

The first one was hand making of colorful plastic woven bags and purses. “This technique helps us reduce pollution in our town, since common plastic bags can be substituted by these. I mean, it impacts on the environment and of course on my family finances. I was still taking the workshop when people started buying my designs”, said Karina, one of the most entrepreneurial students.

The second craft was woodwork for women, where we have learned how to make our own wood products without making big investments on tools or machines.

This kind of workshops are intended to help people with low economic resources. They might represent an opportunity to improve their quality of life by introducing them to new means of productivity such as those described.

We will have more good news to share soon. We are planning to continue our learning programs with the help of technology available to everyone. Wherever you are reading this message, we can share this with you: the earthquake taught us that adversity is the fuel of great projects, and resilience our best weapon. Thank you for making UMPO dreams come true.

Links:

• Video Solidary Speaker