For the Buckner InternationalPan de Vida foster group home in Mexico City, they did the most logical thing: they began growing their own food. Their approach became an innovative hunger solution for the community. Not only did their recent harvest bring in more than 1,000 pounds of tomatoes, but it also brought Gospel opportunities.
The idea was the brainchild of the wife of Buckner Mexico program director, Juan Carlos Millán. However, Millan was faced with two problems: "The land is not good, and sometimes the people have water. But they don't know how to manage this water."
The team found ways around that with its first project in Mexico City. Millan explains there was a learning curve, too. "Many poor people don't know how to get food because they don't know how to produce it and have no opportunities to have this knowledge. One of the best things that our team is working on is giving people those opportunities." Last March, Buckner planted its first greenhouse garden on the flat roof of the Pan de Vida group home.
"We began to use that greenhouse as an educational piece to teach families in the community to grow vegetables for their families as a food source, and later, for ones who got better at it, to sell surplus produce to the market and generate income for their families," said Dexton Shores, regional director of Buckner in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. "The big greenhouse on the roof is also used to provide food for children at the foster group home and the community feeding program."
In the first growing cycle of the project, Buckner Mexico staff planted 150 cucumber plants and 150 tomato plants. They produced 661 pounds of cucumbers and 1,404 pounds of tomatoes.
In the second cycle, the greenhouse was only planted with tomatoes and finished the cycle with a production total of 1,774 pounds. Of that, 358 pounds were consumed at the foster group home and in the feeding program, and more than 1,300 pounds were sold at the market, helping the home become more sustainable.
With such successes behind them, the idea of feasibility for other Buckner projects was a step closer to reality. Millan explains that "the hydroponic is not expensive and is easy to understand and to learn. We now have 43 greenhouses around Mexico's Republic, and it's working."
In addition, with a grant from the Mexican government, Buckner Mexico built 20 small greenhouses last July, purchased seeds, and installed extra water tanks where hydroponic solution could be stored separately from water for daily household use.
These greenhouses were built in July 2010, and a year later, the families are growing spinach, carrots, tomatoes, chilies, radishes, lettuce and cucumbers for their own consumption. "It's a pleasure for us to see that the people have some fruits and they are eating. The most important thing for us is that they understand that they can do more with their resources that they have."
Even better are the numbers of people who are being helped. "Directly, it's like 43 families, but they give to their neighbors, so indirectly, it's more like 90 families," says Millan.
This year, another greenhouse was added to the project, and the team included worm composting to help enrich the soil. There are also plans to begin a program to help families start raising hens for eggs and meat.
Along the way, community members get involved. Many times, they volunteer their time to help just so they can learn how to grow their own food. Buckner is relatively new in the country, so the name isn't closely associated with Gospel work.
However, Millan says that's never far from their minds as they work. "Those activities that we have as Buckner teams are giving another idea for people to understand that we're not talking to them about religion, we just want them to discover our relationship with Jesus Christ."
To learn more about Buckner ministries in Mexico, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment