Long Way 'Round


Greetings from Livingston, Guatemala. I’m out here this week visiting our project with APROSARSTUN, our partner in the region. I don’t think I’ve talked much about this project since being in Guatemala. It’s way out here on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast. This part of Guatemala is really different from the central highlands, where Xela and Totonicapán are located. The area is crazy humid, and the main mode of transportation is boat and canoe. Livingston is a somewhat popular tourist destination, but outside of the tourist center, the rural communities are very remote, very small, and quite underserved. For example, the President of APROSARSTUN is from a village of 15 families. Jose Domingo, EcoLogic’s project técnico is from a community of 35 families, and Samuel, a community promoter recently hired on the project, is from a village of 12 families. Each of these communities are accessible only by boat up small creeks, followed by some walking through the jungle. And each of these communities are part of our project. More than any other EcoLogic project I’ve seen, this one is reaching people way WAY off the beaten path. To me, it’s really cool and really inspiring.

So enough background. This week, I did so many things that each deserve their own post. Thirty-three stoves in Barra Sarstún -- a fishing village on the edge of the Sarstún River-- are being constructed. Francisco, José Domingo, Martín (President of APROSARSTUN,) and I were there to watch/help the first one get built. It was awesome watching the process from the very first brick. I’ve seen so many that are completed and always wondered what it took to build one. As a rule, stove recipients for each EcoLogic project are chosen based on their participation in the project and must help build their stove. In practice, this looks different from project to project. In Barra Sarstún, recipients are members of the Barra Sarstún Fisherfolk Committee, which is the group we work with to develop sustainable fishing practices in the region. The fishermen involved in the committee understand the need to conserve and care for the environment which provides them with their livelihoods (fish!), and are therefore excited to participate in projects which help advance conservation. The stove we watched get built was being installed in a home of a committee member, Don Fabian Vega, who was actually not around to help and got another committee member, Jose Antonio, to cover his labor for him. So Jose Antonio, who is getting his stove in a couple of days, helped our two stove gurus with the construction.

Here’s what you need to build a fuel-efficient stove: cinder blocks, bricks, cement, sand, water, clay/mud (filler in the base of the stove), shovel, machete, trowel, aluminum chimney, and about four hours. And you need to know what you’re doing which is why we hire two men that have built many of our stoves. Oh, I also met some families that really like their stoves and I got to eat some awesome flour tortillas cooked on one. This was the first time I had flour tortillas in Guatemala. They were insanely good. Oh, I also ate a delicious fried fish caught by a member of the fisherfolk committee. Pretty cool. After these 33 stoves are completed, every members of the association will have a fuel-efficient stove in their home.

SO that’s a lot and that’s just the stove. I also visited some agroforestry parcels in some other communities. Come November these parcels will have corn planted in them in rows between the guama trees. The harvest will be in February. I’m coming back down to eat me some guama-protected corn!

While here, EcoLogic also conducted a seminar on conservation and sustainable development project design at  a local school, Ak'Tenamit, which is dedicated to educating students from indigenous families. This school, with which we often collaborate, focuses on ecotourism and rural development, and their hope is that their alumni return to their respective communities to be agents of change. It was great to help facilitate the seminar and hopefully, even if very slightly, help equip these young people with some tools that they can apply in their own communities, to the benefit of their families and neighbors.

Okay, that’s all I got. And it’s starting to rain on me and I’m fairly certain this computer is not waterproof.  Hasta Pronto!

- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

'Tis the Season

It's now the rainy season here in Guatemala, and if you're a true EcoLogian, you know what the rainy season really means: Reforestation Season!


I'm writing to you from my apartment after a day of reforesting in Totonicapan, Guatemala. I'll tell you one thing: after spending a week with our field technicians in Honduras and hearing all their stories about planting trees and building fuel efficient stoves, it was really rewarding to get my hands dirty and to -- at least for a few hours -- experience the life of a "tecnico." If you remember from a previous post, EcoLogic manages 5 greenhouses (soon to be 8) in Totonicapan in the central highlands of Guatemala, where we work in partnership with the 48 Cantones to reforest watershed areas to help protect drinking water sources. The last time I blogged about this project, I had just visited the greenhouses and they were full of saplings. Well, this time around, hundreds of trees were gone! They're now planted in the forest, where they belong.

Today the EcoLogic team had the opportunity to participate in a reforestation activity in a community.  Typically, the village water committees schedule special events when a town, neighborhood or specific group commit the day to reforestation activities. Local people participate in part because a family's "payment" to the 48 Cantones for receiving water in their home is to volunteer their time to protect the area's watershed and fresh water resources. EcoLogic provides the trees and technical know-how to help make these efforts as productive and successful as possible. Today 120 young people from a local high school  -- the Escuela Noral Rural del Occidente (or ENRO) in Totonicapan -- came out to plant trees and learn about their watershed. Teachers at the school wanted the students to learn about the benefits of the forests in a hands-on manner. Of course, EcoLogic was happy to support this goal: Fernando, our field technician in Totonicapan, led the day's activities, providing a practical "how-to" session for the teachers and students, and showing them how and where to plant the arbolitos..

Fernando, a tecnico, explaing the process to students.

It was an awesome event. After a couple of hours in the forest, the students, teachers, Don Augustin (our greenhouse manager), Fernando, and I were able to plant about 1,500 saplings. There's another youth reforestation event tomorrow, as well, and Fernando is guiding that one, too. Oh yeah, and Fernando saved the GPS coordinates of the first tree that I planted so I can always know its exact latitude and longitude and come back and visit it, which I hope to do annually for the rest of my life! I named it Chris. You're surprised, right?

Okay, that's all I can manage for now. This is actually my last week working from the office in Xela. Next week I'll be visiting our project in Sarstun and after that I'll be in Honduras for our all staff retreat.

Hasta la proxima!



- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

Me encantan los mapas

Buenas tardes, Compañeros. I just arrived in Guatemala City after a 15.5 hour bus ride from Escuela Agricola Panamericana - otherwise known as Zamorano University -- which is located near Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Despite the many, long bus trips, I had a really great week spending time with almost all of our field staff. The first two days we honed our skills with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which will help our field technicians and program officers document and monitor our project sites with greater accuracy.  The fact I was able to participate and learn about GIS was fun for me, and will likely improve my ability to collaborate and assist our people in Central America  from our Cambridge office. To gain practice with our GIS skills, we visited the local watershed with Zamorano professors and GIS experts to gather data -- which more or less meant defining its borders -- and then we went back to the lab to input and map the data. Really cool stuff if you´re into maps as I am.

The last two days of the week were spent sharing presentations from everyone´s work. All those present -- 13 in total -- gave at least one power point presentation that summed up her/his work in the field so far this year. Each presentation also allowed for questions and answers afterwards so there was a lot of discussion and sharing of successes and challenges. For me, hearing these presentations was amazingly informative. Our field technicians and program officers are really the hands and feet of EcoLogic - and hearing about agroforestry, stoves, microwatersheds, etc. directly from those implementing our projects was invaluable.

I´m really tired, which you can probably tell because I've scarcely made a joke or a pun! Still I wanted to provide you with an update on this incredible week before it concluded.

Buenas noches!


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

Only Four More Weeks?!

Muy buenos días. I haven’t really blogged in a while other than that crazy quetzal post. To be honest, after being able to blog from EcoLogic project sites about things like water sources, agroforestry plots, and community meetings (things which I find really exciting and I’ll assume you do, too), it’s a little hard to blog about being back at a desk in an office. HOWEVER, I’ve got four more weeks down here in Guatemala and three of those four involve plenty of newsworthy happenings. So this is a blog post to get you pumped up for what’s to come!

Next week, I’ll be joining our entire field staff (12 staff members in total, including Country Program Officers and Project Technicians from Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, and Honduras and our Regional Director and Director of Programs) for a 4 day training/meeting in Honduras. For two days our field staff – which luckily includes me for now – will receive training on the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for Watershed Management. Then we’ll have 2 days of team meetings where each Project Technician and Country Program Officer will present updates on their work, which will include successes, lessons learned, technical advice, and future plans. For me, this is EXACTLY the type of information I want to hear. I’m really excited to listen to our field staff’s experiences and stories – they’re the people making the work happen day-to-day. I’ll be sure to keep you informed…

After this trip, I’ll have one week visiting our project in Sarstún, Guatemala. This area is on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast along the border of Belize. This region is quite different from the highlands where I’ve been. Out there I’ll be visiting with beneficiaries of our project with APROSARSTUN – families who have received fuel-efficient woodstoves, farmers who are implementing agroforestry methods, and fisherfolk who are committing to use sustainable fishing practices. Again, really excited, and I’ll be sure to post plenty.

After that, it’s back to Honduras for another week. This time, for EcoLogic’s All-Staff Retreat which we have once every two years. If you’ve ever been to the “Our People” part of EcoLogic’s website, then you’ve seen a picture from the last retreat. Pre-Chris, and pre-several others now working with EcoLogic. Now the reason for the retreat, of course, is not to get an updated picture for the website (although that will happen -- never fear!). It’s so that our entire staff – those based in Cambridge, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Panama, and Belize – can come together to plan, reflect, review best practices, lessons learned and exciting new opportunities to do meaningful work, and also to simply spend time together and get to know one another.  This year we will visit a project site in northern Honduras and then spend a few days in meetings together, with time set aside for activities in the city of Copan Ruinas, an ancient Mayan site in western Honduras.

For many of us at EcoLogic, our relationships with those in other offices are almost exclusively electronic via email or Skype. It's been very exciting for me to finally meet some of my coworkers in person, and I have no doubt that this time we have spent working "shoulder to shoulder" will make us more effective and efficient collaborators in the future. For some at EcoLogic, the retreat will be the first time they have the opportunity to meet many of their colleagues.  For others the retreat will be something like a family reunion. But one thing’s certainly true for everyone: we're all looking forward to it! 

And after I'll return home, just in time for summer in Boston!

PS - There’s already a rumor that an all-staff soccer game is going to happen at the retreat – field staff vs. Cambridge staff. Bet you can guess which team I’m gonna play with! I know you’ll want to see a video, but I’ll just say right now that any footage I capture I’ll be selling to one of those sports bloopers production companies. Hey, relax, as a fundraiser for EcoLogic -- of course!


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and has documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011.