Education Ecuador Project #22347

Yachana Foundation Fund

by YACHANA Foundation

Project Report | Jul 22, 2016
Yachana Foundation Fund Serves the Community

By Douglas McMeekin | Executive Director Yachana Foundation

Student from Earthquake Area Rebuilding Skills

Over the past 10 years has been in education and we have reached over 500 students. This fund was established to help facilitate the ongoing operation of the foundation, to enable us to reach more students, and has proven extremely useful.

In any institution, like a foundation, there are the general operating expenses necessary to keep the institution functioning. One example is a training program established for residents from the northern coast of Ecuador that suffered a 7.8 earthquake on April 16, 2016. Immediate help for the victims was supplied from around the world, and this was wonderful. But the Yachana Foundation was looking for a longer-term support based on the concept of “teach a man to fish”. So we designed a training program in different types of construction techniques. The first course has been very successfully completed in masonry work. Though the foundation received support for the actual cost of the course, the overhead expenses were covered from this general Global Giving fund. Other courses are being planned and again, the general fund will facilitate these being completed.

The general fund allows us to build infrastructure and initiate projects that, in the long term, are self-sufficient and generate a profit for the foundation, but the hard part is that initial funding. An example is our chicken production, which is now completed and providing healthy poultry for internal consumption and also for sale in the area. The project, in just a few months, is now completely self-sufficient and does not require any additional foundation investment. But without the initial support to allow us to build the infrastructure, stocking of baby chicks and buying feed, this valuable productive, but also an important educational project for our students in practical agriculture, would never have been possible. There are many more projects in the pipeline that this fund is helping to facilitate. These are just a couple of examples of the importance of this general fund and we appreciate all who are supporting us through this fund.

Chicken Production Student Project

Student Made Chicken Plucker

Team Work - Constructions Skills

Links:

Yachana Foundation

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Apr 26, 2016
Progress In Agriculture In the Amazon of Ecuador

By Colleen Ebken | Global Giving Lead

The Yachana Foundation Fund has been enabling progress in a program in agriculture. As part of this program students at Yachana are offered the opportunity to learn how to be more self sustainability for our education program by producing more of our their own food and in the future food for their families. In addition our students, who are all in a technical agricultural program of the Ministry of Education, must have specific projects suitable for their grade. At the Yachana we currently work with 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade students and each has their own project. The 10^th graders are raising rice. We have planted ¾ hectare (2 acres) of rice that will be ready to harvest in about three months. This will produce around 3,000 pounds of dried and husked rice, ready to eat. Our school uses around 1,500 pounds in a year to fee the students, so the surplus we plan to sell to help offset expenses. The 11^th grade project is culinary, working in our industrial kitchen and learning how to prepare different dishes and all of the nutritional aspects of the foods. All the staff and students enjoy eating the results of their work. Our 12^th grade students have adopted a project in raising broiler chickens. We started with 100 chicks and harvested and processed all of them after seven weeks. We have now started with a second production and will gear up for a larger production since the first batch showed a significant demand. As part of the chicken project, and looking for ways to be innovative, the students helped to design and build a chicken plucker [remove the feathers from chickens]. This was accomplished simply by using a sheet of 1/8-inch aluminum for the drum, we found simple "plucking fingers" in the United States and imported them to the Amazon. Most of the mechanisms for the motor, axel and other parts were pirated from an old washing machine and other junk we had lying around. We the chicken plucking machine works wonderfully, plucking two chickens at a time in less than 20 seconds. The students are very proud of their invention.

A lot more agricultural projects are in the works as funding becomes available. It is through contributions to the Yachana Foundation Fund that you are others contribute that will enable our agriculture training to grow and expand. Thank you to all the past donors and we encourage others to also contribute to this general fund that is being applied to help students in interesting and creative endeavors.

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