Shade coffee plantations are a reservoir of biological and cultural diversity. Families, usually work together cultivating the land. Therefore, this people have a spiritual, physical, social and cultural connection to their land. Accordingly with this, our project aims to promote the dialogue and an interchanges of knowledge between young and adults in a coffee-growing region, to rescue the bicultural knowledge.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Zimpizahua, Coatepec, Veracruz
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
Families in Zimpizahua have cultivated coffee since 1808, historians said the first seeds of coffee that were cultivated in Mexico were planted here. This is a community of families dedicated to cultivate coffee and the coffee bean harvest by generations but now there is a lack of biocultural knowledge because young people is going to school and do not have enough time to accomplish his labors with the adults in the field.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Families from Zimpizahua will use video and photography to show their stories of the coffee plantation, stories of biodiversity and use of resources, stories of medicinal plants, stories of how moon affects plants at the coffee plantation and why, their cosmovision, stories of old people and young people learning and sharing together ancestral knowledge. Everyone in their families will have a voice. A decolonized vision will be showed.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
We already have started to work with two families; one of them is a family that belongs to one of the first families that have founded the community. A young man is learning how to take pictures and videos with the camera, and the other family is composed by two kids and their parents. The rural school has gave us the opportunity to work with the kids and their families. Parents and their sons are agree with the project.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
Around 40 persons will be trained to use the cameras. We will start with young people at the local schools and their parents and grandparents. We will use Zimpizahua´s school as a center of interchange of ideas and knowledge with all the participants. Our workshops will be an interchange of ideas about how they want to accomplish this project. Until this moment, we have received a donation of two digital cameras, but we would like to get 15 more.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
Our organization counts with human support, materials to give our workshops. We would like to buy more cameras to be able to start the proyect with more families. The microgrant funding is enough to sustain our project because we already have an Environmental Education program at Zimpizahua's school. Two cameras are with two families getting great results.
Contact name
Eugenia Eréndira Gómez Espinosa
Organization
Fuerza Ecológica A. C.