Semillas de Amor: Stephanie Oct 17

The following is a post from Stephanie, an intern at Semillas de Amor:

October 17

Just like everything else in life we had a few hiccups last week that prevented us from meeting with the mothers of the foundation and the gardens that were supposed to be started didn’t happen.  This week has already been very productive on the other hand, we have a friend who decided to come and help for the week. It’s really nice to have someone with a pair of new eyes and fresh ideas. We were able to get a really nice looking fence up around the garden giving us way more room to plant and more room to move around. I was able to get a few donations that amounted to 60 dollars. We were able to buy a bag and a half of cement, 50 cinder blocks, and some sand.  We will be able to do construction for a few days with all the material we got. Because of the holiday on Monday we were not able to go to Banco Alimentos (the food bank), So the food had to be picked up yesterday (Tuesday) since that was happening while preparation of the food was supposed to happen lunch couldn’t be served so while we were working up at the foundation and ran and just grabbed some bread for whatever kids showed up.  Quite a few came in and out but there was a handful who really wanted to help. One of our students Neicer who is very punctual came earlier than any of the other kids and worked a long side us the entire time. He was so happy and excited to help us and was quite good at mixing cement, weeding the garden, digging up roots of unwanted tree. I think when people of community get involved with the work that’s being done and put their two cents in they take more ownership over the project. Neicer has obviously been involved in the development of the foundation, he has even been included in the paintings on the walls from previous volunteers.  It seems to me that because Neicer has always been involved with the development, he now is the only that comes every single day and he’s the one who  putting up the chairs and sweeping at the end of the activity.

Thursday we are meeting with the mothers of the family to teach them about planting a garden. Oh ya! And we got our first pepper in the garden!! Wahoo!