Climate Action Mexico Project #50049

Teaching children in Chiapas how to grow forests

by Asociacion Cultural Na Bolom

Project Report | Jan 9, 2023
10 NURSERIES ALREADY BUILT

By Patricia Lopez Sanchez | General Director

Kids from Zinacantan visiting the planetarium

Thanks to all of your help and to our team's fantastic work, we closed the year with the construction of more nurseries and 3 requests for other nurseries in the highlands. How does this works:

The first crucial thing was putting together a team of experts that love the project. We looked among young graduates from universities in Chiapas and have Roxana, Marco and Victor in charge of the project. Even though Victor is the project leader, they all work as a team. Marco keeps visiting the nurseries in the jungle area at least once a month and meets with communities that have been asking to be part of the project. The most exciting thing is that even if the school authorities aren't as enthusiastic as we would like them to be, teachers, parents and kids are asking for the project and keeping it going. Which for us is a huge success.

In the highlands area, we have two new nurseries and one in San Cristobal. This year we are hiring new staff to help Marco and don Pepe who helps in the morning in the Na Bolom nursery will have extra hours to continue with his amazing work. As you know our first concern is to pay good salaries to our employees and to hire people from the communities.

This year we are opening two new nurseries in the jungle and another in San Cristobal. We want the ones that are already producing to achieve 50% more production this year. We will start reforestation next summer.

We have increased our collaboration with other ONGs and are answering requests to open nurseries and help them with their projects, that is the case of Cantaro Azul which has a water project in La Trinitaria, among other communities, and wants to start water trees nurseries with our help.

The kids from Zinacantan visited Na Bolom's new planetarium at La Enseñanza. They have been very productive and so do their teachers from Yo'onik so we invited them and paid for the transportation and lunch.

So please, consider becoming a monthly donor and help us continue with this project.

We wish you all the best for this year.

New nursery at the CECYT junior high

One of the first nurseries in the jungle.

Links:

Know more about Na Bolom's projects

Permalink

Sep 12, 2022
Working during school summer vacation

By Patricia Lopez Sanchez | general director

Team work

I am convinced that the best way to make a change and get the projects to continue is to involve kids and teens. The target of our Teaching children in Chiapas project is exactly that, nevertheless it is not enough. For us it is also very important to involve people from the communities to be part of the project as trainers.

Let me tell you Marco’s story. He is originary from a community named Benemerito de las Américas in the Lacandon rainforest.

Marco arrived in Na Bolom to do his social service as part of his college credits. When we started the nurseries project in the rainforest, he asked us to let him go with us as a volunteer. Thanks to the donations we have been receiving and the interest of the schools to open more nurseries we hired him. He has been great as he is from the area and knows the roads. He has been doing the follow up and trainings in the 5 nurseries we opened this year at the Lacandon rainforest area. He even took care of the plants during the summer while the schools were closed and got the students and parents come help him. Marco loves the project. He says he really enjoys being part of something that can make a change.

Other things we do

One of our projects in Na Bolom is a medical Fund through which we help lacandon people with medicines and doctors’ appointments. Juan is from Metzabok. He has a problem in his nervous system and cannot walk. He spent a month in San Cristobal during the spring to see doctors and get a treatment. As part of the activities with the help of an organization called independent movement, Juan learnt how to use a wheelchair so that he can have certain movement and doesn't depend entirely on his family. Na Bolom got the wheelchair and took it to his home. Every time we need to visit the communities’ part of our climate change team travels to recognize other possibilities, recover seeds or do a diagnose of the area. In this case Victor oversaw the visit and took medicines to Juan's wife, Patricia so that he can continue with his treatment, as part of the trip he was able to recognize another area where to collect seeds and work with the lacandons.

Thanks to your help we can continue working. Please consider becoming a monthly donor.

Taking care of the first plants

Meet Marco

Gathering tetrapak to recycle

Wheelchair and medicines for Juan

Permalink

May 16, 2022
Update of activities

By Patricia Lopez Sanchez | general director

My name is Patricia López Sánchez I have been Na Bolom's general director for 4 years now. My team and I are very excited about the nurseries project. Eventhough the pandemic forced us to adapt and try different things while the schools reopened we are having results even more interesting than expected.

So let me tell you what happened in the past months.

The Mitontic nursery is up and producing. The community asked us help to improve the quality of their coffee and they have their first harvest and are already selling their product. At the same time they are producing trees for the reforestation. They asked us help to teach them how to build solar dehydrators in order to dehydrate fruits and have an other product to improve their economy.

The Zinacantan nursery has their first production. Kid's went back to their activities a few months ago. We did some trainings with them to teach them how to germinate the seeds, had a session to gather more seeds and are taking care of the plants that will be planted at the end of the summer.

COBACH

As you probably remember we signed an agreement with the state highschools to stablish nurseries in five schools in the rain forest area. We have already built 4 and have started gathering seeds. In the next week our team will visit them to do the second training on seeds germination and we will be building a 5th nursery in the lacandon area.

PRESENTING THE PROJECT

We participated at a school fair in San Cristobal to present local kids the project and teach them how to grow their own seeds. In our second visit, the school principal asked us to be part of the project and build a nursery in the school premises.

Thank you so much for your help. Please don't forget that this work goes on and monthly donations are very important for us.

Links:

Visit our page to know more about our organization.

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 ›

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.