Village Earth Blog: Winter 2009 Newsletter

As many of you know, Dr. Maurice Albertson, one of the founders of Village Earth, recently passed away. Thank you to all of our supporters from around the world who sent their love and support. His memorial service had a wonderful turnout and was a really beautiful event in his honor. He was an inspiration to everyone at Village Earth and we are honored to carry-on his bold vision for the world.

Also, THANK YOU to all of our supporters who made our end of year fundraising campaign a great success!! This year we plan to continue to improve and expand our training programs, while continuing to work with communities as they direct their own path of development and work toward a sustainable future. And we hope you will be able to continue with us on this path as allies!

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Cambodia Evictions
By Drew McDowell, Cambodia Project Coordinator

It’s been 1 month since the eviction of the Dey Krahom community in Phnom Penh. During most of this time my ability to concentrate and work at a computer has been diminished, but I have been on the ground getting our school going again and helping our students the best I could.

After the eviction the school was an open oozing wound, literally and figuratively. The oozing is the sewage problem that has arose, and the wounds are sometimes emotional, and sometimes cuts on feet, etc. Neither of them received the usual attention we give because our problems were so mounting. A part of our daily jobs is to take care of problems, and often get involved in people’s lives on a very personal level. For the past weeks so many people around me all had serious problems occurring at the same time, and it hurt me badly to see the suffering and not be able to help like I would like to.

For those that didn’t get my initial email, on January 24^th the bomb was dropped immediately outside my school (I always say ‘our’ school, but this was personal). Maybe it could be better described as a staged series of bombs orchestrated by the government and developer 7NG. The morning of January 24^th, after sleeping on top of the desks for 2 hours, I woke to the sound of chaos, and as I walked closer to the edge of the slum I saw a mass of people aimed at destruction. A destruction of houses and lives.

As the reality unfolded, my priorities were to gather information, provide logistical support, emotional support, and try to think to the next hour, 6 hours, 12-18 hours... The luxury of longer term thinking was still far off. I had to take inventory, and every resource needed to be utilized, but we had staff out of town and lots of challenges. An Emergency Response was needed to the crisis that enveloped my every sensory, in panoramic view, in the form of loud noises from houses being bulldozed, piles of rusty nail filled debris that needed to be traversed to be able to go anywhere, and a blur of things happening; my phone ringing and receiving text messages, trying to gather and disseminate information, sunburn, students crying, pressure from the officials to clear everything out, anger coming out of my body in the form of tears, irritability, not knowing what to do next, moving people’s things out of their collapsing houses… It was a day far unlike any other in my life, and I have never been called upon like I was that day.

Life continued in a similar vein for the next days, until the trauma started to wear off and we could start to think about how to help on another level, when we began addressing getting kids back into public school, housing, hiring someone to cook meals, keeping our school clean, getting our sink fixed, and giving care to traumatized people… I’ve never been so focused. I didn’t talk to anyone unless there was something that needed to be said, like “can you…?”

To write what we did would take a lot of effort. We found housing for at least 6 families/people, we’re providing daily transportation to school for over 40 kids to come 20km from the relocation site, where they are homeless, give them breakfast and lunch, delivered clothing and other donations, provide a doctor, kid activities, day care, professional counseling, and a thousand other things, most I am not yet aware of. Our team leaders are amazing, and what we did could not be attempted without a mass of dynamic people. Many friends came at a time of need and their efforts were true kindness. We didn’t do it to be nice, but felt we needed to be there for them because their situation was so dire, and couldn’t not help. Many generous donations came in as well, some from people I have never met, and for that we are incredibly grateful. I hope to write thank you notes soon.

Today the last family will move out of our computer lab, but we still have extra students living in the school and no great solution to their housing problem. Patience often is a good strategy, and they will find solutions. We’ll be here for them and do our best to make sure they continue with their education, and are stepping with aid as appropriate. Every Aziza student’s family that was evicted has received some assistance from us.

The people that were evicted fall into 4 categories, from a housing perspective; owners with house numbers, unrecognized owners, renters, and people from the market (market stall owners). By now, the vast majority of the owners who were recognized have taken a house at the relocation site, 20km from Phnom Penh. They didn’t want this house, and many have simply put a lock on the gate and left it empty while they have found a place to stay or rent close to their jobs in the city. They are the lucky ones. There are 335 families from the latter 3 categories living without a roof over their head, in terrible conditions, and the situations is getting worse as their resources are depleted. The future of the people living homeless is unknown, and they feel they need to camp in front of the developers office, as instructed, in hopes that they will be given some compensation, such as a small plot of land somewhere undesirable. Included in this mass of haggard souls are some of our students. Beautiful, intelligent, hard working, committed to a better future, and trying to keep it together through an unbearably tough time, sleeping without security or hygiene. Some of our students living there are high school girls, and I worry about them the most. Actually, I try not to think about them because it is so sad. Their situation was tough to begin with, then a mob of men came and broke down their house while they scrambled to salvage their personal belongings, and now they are camping far outside of town with no toilets or running water.

Other stories turned out better, but in our research of the effects on students education in the aftermath of the eviction (to present to the government), when questioning just the people camping at the relocation site, we found 45 students had dropped out of school because of the eviction. Others went through a tough time, but are getting back on their feet. It will be a life event for all who went through it. We have received some generous donations that made our assistance possible, but will need lots more to continue to help them. Thank you for caring. It means the world to me, and was crucial to getting me through a tough time.

Click here to view a Photo Essay of the evictions.

To make a donation directly to this project, click here.

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Lakota Bison Caretakers Cooperative

By David Bartecchi, Pine Ridge Project Coordinator & Executive Director

This January, the Lakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative launched retail sales of packaged grass-fed buffalo meat raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Lakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative (LBCC) is a 100% Native American owned and operated cooperative association on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Its membership is made up of small family buffalo caretakers who respect the buffalo and the land.

Buffalo raised by members:

Live on open ranges, never in feedlots
Eat wild grasses their entire lives
Are Free from antibiotics and hormones
Respectfully harvested in the field

Members of the LBCC are committed to the restoration of the northern plains ecology, self-sufficiency and strengthening the sovereignty and self-determination of the Oglala Lakota Nation and all indigenous peoples. To the best of our knowledge, the LBCC is the only Native American run cooperative of small family buffalo caretakers in the United States.

Village Earth helped to establish the LBCC starting in 2007. The LBCC was officially incorporated in South Dakota August of 2008. The LBCC has partnered with the Fort Collins based Allied Natural Meats, LLC. which will function as its fair-trade distribution partner. The LBCC currently has the capability to ship wholesale orders throughout the country. However, at this time, the LBCC and Allied Natural Meats, LLC are only set up to do online retail sales in the Fort Collins, Colorado area but plan to be selling national via mail order soon. For more information please visit the LBCC website at http://www.lakotabuffalocaretakers.org.

The Lakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative (LBCC) is a 100% Native American owned and operated cooperative association on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Its membership is made up of small family buffalo caretakers who respect the buffalo and the land. Members of the LBCC are committed to the restoration of the northern plains ecology, self-sufficiency and strengthening the sovereignty and self-determination of the Oglala Lakota Nation and all indigenous peoples.

The roots of the LBCC come from the Adopt-A-Buffalo program initiated by Village Earth, a not-for-profit organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Adopt-A-Buffalo was started to support Lakota families to utilize their legally allotted lands, over 60% of which was being leased out, primarily by non-tribal members. Through this initiative, Village Earth helped recover over 2000 acres for buffalo restoration, releasing over 82 head of buffalo onto these lands. Some of the families Village Earth worked with were just getting started, others were already raising buffalo on their lands. Over the years, these families helped one another care for their herds. In 2007 the Lone Buffalo Project, the Knife Chief Buffalo Nation, and the Black Feather's began discussing the possibility of forming a cooperative to help market their natural grassfed buffalo. By August of 2008 the cooperative was officially incorporated in the State of South Dakota and by November their labels were approved by the USDA.

While the members of the LBCC seek to earn some income from their herds, their overarching goal is to restore the buffalo, restore the native ecology on Pine Ridge, and help renew the sacred connection between the Lakota people and the buffalo nation. By purchasing meat from the LBCC you are supporting these goals. We also invite you to visit us and the buffalo on Pine Ridge.

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Update from Guatemala
By Ann Jefferson, Guatemala Project Coordinator

Here’s a little update on the Women’s Association of San Pablo Xucaneb’, the Mayan village where we have been working since 2002. Last summer we began building on the land managed by the Women’s Association. Now we have a little house made of wood, the standard building material in this area of Alta Verapaz. It is all finished, except it has no furniture yet, and it’s the most wonderful little house you can imagine. Everything in it except the nails, the tin roof and the lock on the front door is completely handmade of local pine, some of it taken from the Association’s own land. The husbands of the women in the Association provided most of the materials and did the work. And out behind the house they made a lovely little all-wood latrine over a hole they proudly told me is “two meters deep!” That should last us awhile.

MOL.E.R. wants to use the land and the house to demonstrate some of the new techniques that are being employed in rural areas of the developing world. We will soon be working with an organization that comes to villages in Central America to show people how to build closed-box stoves with chimneys, combining the advantages of cleaner air, home heating, and fuel efficiency. This will be a departure from the norm for these villagers whose usual practice is to build a separate little structure for the kitchen and to have an open fire there which does heat that part of the home, but at a high cost to women’s and children’s respiratory systems. The kitchen is women’s workplace, and they and the kids are there nearly all day long, especially in the winter when it’s cold and the kitchen is the only warm place to be.

In addition to helping us build our house, your donations have gone a long way toward paying our technical assistants. Adriana Lázaro, the Cobán coordinator of MOL.E.R. for the past 6 years, continues to spend a day a week in the village, providing assistance with micro-lending, crochet classes for interested women, and management of both the scholarship program we have been operating for five years and the one-acre lot where the women plant vegetables for their families and for sale in local markets. She has also been working with a men’s group in the village to help them go through the bureaucratic process of legalizing their group so they can apply for various programs made available by the Guatemalan government and non-governmental organizations that work in Alta Verapaz.

We also get assistance from a technician who is a member of a different Q’eqchi’-speaking village in the area. Macario Can Pop, who has been trained in community organizing, serves as a translator, supervisor of the scholarship students from his village, and advocate for members of the Q’eqchi’ community around Cobán. We would like to hire Macario to visit Xucaneb’ once a month to help the Women’s Association, but this would mean paying him Q.150 each time (about $20) and we’re not sure we can afford to make that a regular monthly commitment. His work is needed though, and Macario is not only a native Q’eqchi’ speaker and trained community organizer, but has demonstrated his commitment to the Alta Verapaz Q’eqchi’ communities, so it would be a boost to the Women’s Association if we could contract his services.

We also pay $100 a month to our office person, Aliria Ruiz, a struggling university student and computer whiz who manages the office in Cobán, and does all our bookkeeping. Aliria also tutors scholarship students when they need help and visits the village from time to time.

One outcome of the project is that the members of the Women’s Association are learning to understand, though not often speak, Spanish; as a result they have a better understanding of what’s going on around them and are beginning to feel more connected to the world outside their village and more able to move about in the larger community. For one thing they have a bank account, which was a big step. Next they’re going to work on learning the alphabet and how to sign their names. Only two of the older members, about 12 women, can sign their names; the usual way of authorizing documents is with a thumbprint.

So that’s a quick sketch of what we’re up to at the moment, or would like to be up to if we could afford it. To those of you who have donated to the Guatemala project, I want to convey the deep gratitude of everyone involved with the project: the U.S. coordinators, Flora Terán (Colorado) and me; our employees, who desperately need the work; and the members of the Women’s Association who open every meeting with a prayer and never neglect to put in a word for their Northamerican sponsors.