By Vania | Outreach Coordinator
Beloved donors,
My name is Vania and I have joined the Highland Support Project staff to take on Project Management and Outreach Coordinator roles for Ecuador. I am excited to take on these roles and keep updating all of you as we continue to make progress!
You, our selfless donors, have supported us in our efforts to teach English to children in Ecuador and I’d like to update you on some recent changes. In order to advance education efforts, we focused on attaining work visas for English teachers but unfortunately, the visas were denied by the Ecuadorian government. This means that our current project was not feasible and, regrettably, our work and report update was delayed because of this issue. We deeply apologize for the delay and will assure you are receiving current information going forward.
HSP is excited to announce that we will be shifting our focus towards a new opportunity: water accessibility projects in Chismaute, Ecuador! The water project will focus on irrigation systems to further HSPs mission of healing through food and community-based empowerment.
To offer a little background on this project, Chismaute, Ecuador is a hilltop community that was a result of the ‘encomienda system’ where native people were forced into labor by colonists. The last encomienda was not broken up until the late 1990s in Ecuador and when it was, workers were finally given land of their own. Unfortunately, this land was on mountain tops that didn’t have proper irrigation. As a result, they were unable to grow food and couldn’t feed themselves or their families.
Fortunately, the community is situated between 3 peaks that funnel water year-round into a high-volume river system and serves as a steady water reserve. The community has a water pump but needs to run piping to the mountain to establish an irrigation system for agricultural pursuits. This will make it possible for families to thrive on the land and not worry about food insecurity and give the 1,200 community members a chance at escaping poverty.
Once again, we cannot thank you enough for supporting our project and making it possible for us to keep empowering these communities.
Thank you for your unwavering support,
Highland Support Project
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.
