Economic Growth Puerto Rico Project #39672

Creating a Just Recovery for Puerto Rico

by La Maraña

Creating a Just Recovery for Puerto Rico

Project Report | Apr 10, 2020
Adjusting to a New (Temporary) Normal

By Sofia Unanue | Co-Founder and Executive Director

Solar street light installation in Comerio

Dear GlobalGiving community,

We are once again faced by challenges that lead us into reflection and drive us to come together to learn more about ourselves, our communities and our society at large. After having faced the 2017 hurricanes, ousting the governor in the summer of 2019, enduring through a series of earthquakes at the beginning of this year, and now doing our best to stay safe through a pandemic, we continue to uncover the deep-rooted interdisciplinary vulnerabilities we face as a society. Accepting this bleak reality, socially distanced from our co-workers and partners, we must continue to build our motivation to serve the communities of Puerto Rico, who are worthy of springing back through a just recovery process.

Our team at La Maraña has been focusing efforts, while adjusting work patterns to the new remote normal, on identifying how to work through existing project timelines so that our Imaginación Post-María objectives are reached once we are able to resume normal activities. In the meantime, our base team has also been focusing energies on compiling the knowledge we have gathered from working with our amazing partner communities, which will feed into the ongoing development of our Open-Source ToolKit and Documentary.

Since our last report, we were able to start working with local community leaders to define and develop their emergency management plans, as well as continue with those tasks that don’t require face-to-face activities, such as developing communication strategies, fine-tuning our strategies to finalize the social impact projects and catching up with reporting.

Our partnerships with the communities and community leaders is the key to the success of the Imaginacion Post-María implementation, therefore we continue coordinating with them so that activities that can be accomplished remotely are given priority, while the final construction phases of the social impact projects have halted in the abandoned school in Carolina, as well as the solar lighting project in Comerío and the water station project in Humacao. That said, we are excited to start defining how La Maraña’s engagement with the community will transition once we can reopen construction projects!

We are staying motivated during this time by thinking about La Maraña’s future and the transition we hope to carry-out while the social impact projects come to fruition and our Open-Source deliverables take the lead in our work.

Stay safe and stay at home!

With so much care,

La Maraña's Team

website | instagram | facebook

Permalink

Feb 11, 2020
Imaginacion Post-Maria: Moving Forward

By Sofia Unanue | Co-Founder and Executive Director

Humacao: Searching for Water Springs

Dear GlobalGiving community,

It is with great enthusiasm that we share with you some of the strides made with La Maraña's community participatory recovery model, Imaginación Post-María. As mentioned in our GlobalGiving project, these funds are being channeled directly to bringing the Imaginación Post-María model to life in three communities across Puerto Rico. In this quarter, we have successfully transitioned to the implementation of each community's commonly elected social impact project, which has been made possible through the offering of a 50-75k grant in each community and active participatory construction processes.

Here is a quick highlight to what has been achieved in each community in this past quarter:

La Vuelta del Dos, Los Guaretos and Los Padillas, Comerío

Having been left in the dark for over 9 months after the passing of hurricanes Irma and María, the youth-led leadership of La Vuelta del Dos, Los Guaretos and Los Padillas has focused their recovery efforts on the creation, advocacy and execution of a solar energy social impact project for their community. With the the first allotment of La Maraña's 50k grant in hand, the community has already installed over a dozen solar posts that illuminate public and pedestrian spaces in their community. This month, we hope to offer the second allotment of the 50k grant, which will launch the construction phases of a diversity of solar energy equipment (including a microgrid!) to further illuminate the community and the exciting construction of public infrastructure (domino tables, benches, railings, etc.) to accompany these newly lit areas.

San Antón and Saint Just, Carolina

As part of community organizing and planning efforts, the black and women-led San Antón and Saint Just community in Carolina has taken on the exciting task of transforming their abandoned school into a community hub that offers alternative schooling, small-business development and sustainable agriculture. In this quarter, we successfully handed the first allotment of La Maraña's 50-75k grant in order to officially catapult the social impact project they elected: the creation of a public space and fruit forest in the green areas that surround the abandoned school, coupled by avante-garde artistic programming and a culinary space. These funds have propelled the beginning construction stages of preparing and cleaning the soil for the future construction of the public space and fruit forest!

Mariana and Jagüeyes, Humacao

Due to the dire need to find local-based solutions to disaster recovery, the Mariana and Jagüeyes community in Humacao is mapping, designing and executing a Community-Driven Emergency Plan based on their most abundant resource: natural water springs. Together with La Maraña’s team, the community has designed a network of water hubs and wells that stretch across the lush mountains of their community. With the first allotment of the 50k grant already offered, two of the three community water stations have been built and the terrain has been prepared for an additional community water well. In this upcoming month, the final allotment of the grant will be offered to ensure full project completion.

Bringing all of these designs to life has been a brave journey, where collective imagination has emerged to demonstrate that communities have the innate power to dream and materialize their ideas for change. We are only in the beginning stages of construction in all three communities, so stay tuned to see full project completion in the upcoming months!

Finally, in addition to these great strides in Imaginación Post-María’s original three community allies, this year we are excited to announce the integration of a fourth community in La Maraña's work: Malecón de Naguabo. Collaborating with the community fishermen cooperative, we will be working hand-in-hand with this coastal community in order to create a Community-Driven Master Plan that will help decipher new alternatives to strengthen their local fishing cooperative model and further spur community engagement.

It is such an honor to continue receiving your support and have you accompany us on this just recovery journey.

With so much care,

La Maraña's Team

Humacao: Water Station

Comerio: Community Lighting Workshop

Comerio: Community Light Post

Carolina: Public Space and Fruit Forest Design

Carolina: School Brigade

Permalink

Nov 11, 2019
Imaginacion Post-Maria Updates

By Sofia Unanue | Co-Director and Co-Founder

Dear all,

It is with great enthusiasm that we share with you some of the exciting new updates in La Maraña's community participatory recovery model, Imaginación Post-María. As mentioned in our GlobalGiving project, these funds are being channeled directly to bringing the Imaginación Post-María model to life in three communities across Puerto Rico. This year, neighbors in each community have been using participatory design and planning skills in order to collaboratively design a community-driven master plan and implement a commonly elected social impact project in their community through the offering of a 50-75k grant and capacity-building collaboration with La Maraña. Additionally, this year we have wrapped up two full house reconstructions that were part of our initial hurricane relief efforts (see videos below!)

Here is a quick highlight to what has been achieved in each community in the past few months:

San Antón and Saint Just, Carolina

We successfully inaugurated Iris' home! Having been supported by the GlobalGiving crowdfunding community, we were finally able to construct Iris’ home after it was destroyed by hurricanes Irma and María. Check out the video of her journey back home!
As part of community organizing and planning efforts, the black and woman-led San Antón and Saint Just community in Carolina has taken on the exciting task of transforming their abandoned school into a community hub that offers alternative schooling, small-business development and sustainable agriculture. Through Imaginación Post-María, La Maraña will offer the community a 50-75k grant to catapult the social impact project they elected: the creation of a public space and fruit forest in the green areas that surround the abandoned school, coupled by avante-garde artistic programming and culinary and holistic health spaces. We are currently active in the participatory design phase of this social impact project and hope to soon launch full implementation.

La Vuelta del Dos, Los Guaretos and Los Padillas, Comerío

As part of hurricane relief efforts, we achieved the full construction of Luis’s home in Comerío! Like all of La Maraña’s participatory design projects, the community was embedded in every step of the process - from design imagination workshops to community construction workers leading the building efforts. Check out this beautiful video of the full home reconstruction process!
Having been left in the dark for over 9 months after the passing of hurricanes Irma and María, the youth-led leadership of La Vuelta del Dos, Los Guaretos and Los Padillas have focused their recovery efforts on the creation, advocacy and execution of a solar energy social impact project for their community. The design process integrated community feedback at every turn and today this community will use a diversity of solar energy equipment (including a microgrid!) to illuminate all public and pedestrian spaces in their community. In late October, we were proud to sign our grant agreement and offer the community the first allotment of their 50k grant for their solar energy initiative!

Mariana and Jagüeyes, Humacao

Due to the dire need to find local-based solutions to disaster recovery, the Mariana and Jagüeyes community in Humacao is mapping, designing and executing a Community-Driven Water Plan based on their most abundant resource: natural water springs. Together with La Maraña’s team, the community has designed a network of water hubs and wells that stretch across the neighborhood. La Maraña will soon be handing in a 50k grant to bring this design to life!

Finally, in addition to these great strides in Imaginación Post-María’s implementation, we wanted to share a wonderful victory in our organization. La Maraña’s women co-leadership, Alexandra Llegus and Sofía Unanue, have been awarded the Open Society Foundation’s New Executives Fellowship, now becoming part of a 60+ cohort of international leaders hoping to harness their leadership skills in order to spur their organization’s growth.

It is such an honor to continue receiving your support and have you accompany us on this just recovery journey.

With so much love,

La Maraña's Team

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.