Building on previous workers

Yesterday, Week Three students worked in the Global Village as we do every Wednesday. The first week of L&S, we began work on two new gardens in South America. Each week, a little more work is being done, and the staff is enjoying seeing the progress of each project as it continues.

This week, the Bolivia team created a terrace going down the hill. They had to find rocks to build the retaining wall and break up the soil to prepare it for planting. The garden that Week One began and Week Two planted has small plants popping out of the soil! Here's one of our youth smoothing out the terrace:

Another garden near Guatemala is almost finished! It has beautiful, rock-lined paths, raised beds and a wire fence. This week's group got to plant some of the garden and also planted fig trees outside. In the weeks to come, a fence will need to be built and the garden tended. Here's a glimpse of the garden:

Creating these gardens is similar to the mission teams that SIFAT sends to Bolivia and Ecuador. Each team builds on what the last team did. While the team is in a country, its people work with the US team to help the citizens. In the same way, in between Learn & Serve students, the SIFAT staff (mainly John and Andy and volunteers Robert and Megan) work on the gardens, which benefit SIFAT. SIFAT supports short-term teams for long-term development.

But...we can't forget the other groups that didn't work on these two gardens! The Ecuador team worked in our main garden by the community house, and they were able to spend some time by the pond after finishing. Ecuador also worked on making some crafts from bamboo in their micro enterprise.

Here are a few more photos: