Creating a Just Recovery for Puerto Rico

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.