Update – Microfinance Bank and Future Projects

Microfinance Community Bank Meeting
As arranged, the week later we met the president of Reina de Cisne, the teacher and the school treasurer for a meeting at Janeth’s house. We agreed on figures, with an interest rate of 4% for members of the community and 3% for parents. 40% of the interest would go back to the bank, 50% to the school and 10% for admin costs. Having agreed all that, we typed up the paperwork and the next week me and Janeth went and opened up an account in one of the local banks. The bank was ready for loans to be taken out of by mid January – I will be going back to see how they are getting on in May.

Since then, me and Helen have both had to return to the UK. I am here until the end of April, earning a bit of money and seeing my parents, and Helen has returned early from her sabbatical to Deloitte. Whilst I have been home, I have been running some classes and assemblies at my old school, Chulmleigh Community College, who raised an amazing £488.63 last year for SelvaKids! The students so far have been amazing, really interested in Kichwa culture and enthusiastic about fundraising – watch this space!

Future Projects
Here are the things we will be focusing on in the next few months, if any of you want to help us fundraise/advertise/help in any possible way we would be VERY grateful and either talk to me or Helen or send us an email (selvakids@hotmail.co.uk)….

1. Handcrafts Micro-enterprise – Hopefully from September 2011 we will be selling beautiful Kichwa jewellery made by members of Paltacocha community.

2. Raising money to buy two horses for Paltacocha School. This will be a sustainable way to help the school, as not only will it help the community transport crops to the nearest river (meaning they can then be taken and sold in a local market), the horses can be “rented” out to members of the community – all profits to buying school resources. ($450-$500 needed).

3. Raising money to buy wellies for all children in Paltacocha school. The kids have to walk up to 2 hours to get to school, along very muddy and hilly paths. We have bought wellies for the kids at the other schools we work with, and would like to do the same here. ($250-$300 needed).

4. Plant a Chocolate Tree campaign. Explained above! We will be selling Chocolate Trees very soon and we would LOVE for you to buy one – you will be helping a community, a school and the rainforest! Watch this space!!

5. We are always on the lookout for old laptops to donate to the schools….

Update – New Community Paltacocha

Community Paltacocha
After a half hour bus ride, we arrived at Los Rios, which is a small collection of wooden buildings on the edge of the River Napo. River Napo is a tributary from the Amazon River, and is between 1-3 miles wide. Here, we found the Paltacocha teacher waiting for us with a canoe. We jumped aboard, and after a stunning 45 minute canoe ride we arrived at, well, a river bank into the jungle….It was the first time we had visited this community, and I think we had underestimated quite how far it was.

Carrying all our stuff (with a lot of help from some of the parents who had come to meet us!) we set off on the hour walk to the community. Unfortunately this is an hour JUNGLE walk, so involved a lot of hills, a lot of mud, and a lot of falling over…Eventually we arrived (muddy and sweaty), and crossed the small wooden bridge to the community (dodging the holes). This community is a lot bigger, and it seemed that everyone had turned out to meet us. Luckily some of the boys were playing football so most people were engaged in the match.

We sat down, and were immediately presented with glasses of what I can only describe as gone off tequila (someone had mentioned me and Helen were ill – jungle remedies!). Gulping that down, we were then given bowls of chicha – the indigenous Kichwa drink made from Yuca and water. You have to drink the whole bowl, and with a glance at each other, we gulped it down –knowing full well we wouldn’t be getting out of there without a stomach bug!

The parents and kids gathered round, and we presented the Christmas parcels, and some second hand clothes Helen had brought out with her. The teacher translated everything into Kichwa, as a lot of the community do not speak Spanish well or at all. We were then all presented with traditional Kichwa necklaces, as a token of thanks by the kids.

With Paltacocha, as the members are mainly Kichwa, we are planning a different project. Kichwa jewellery is made from plant fibres and seeds, and is incredibly beautiful. We presented the idea to the community, that if they made enough of the jewellery, we will bring it back to the UK and sell it at a profit here. All the money will go back to the people who made it, with a percentage going to the school. This idea went down well, especially with the women in the community who are now planning to build a small hut specifically for making the jewellery.

Finally, as a further gesture of gratitude – we were invited to look around the school and then have lunch. The teacher had described it as a “typical dish” and neither me or Helen were worried, having spent so much time in the region – we thought we knew what we would be expecting – yucca and fish! Unfortunately, it was very very typical and we were presented with a buffet of worms, snails, roast cocoa beans, small fish and yucca. We sat at the table whilst all the parents sat around in front of us, watching us eat – no getting away with hiding the worms! We ate what we could, and then it was time to say good bye and make the long journey back to Tena.

Update from SelvaKids!

Hello from SelvaKids!

Sorry it has taken such a long time for an update – between myself and Helen we have been very busy! We have had a brilliant 6 months, and have now embarked on some new much more sustainable projects. The number of communities where we work is growing, meaning we are helping more kids have access to better resources


So here is what we’ve been up to….
I moved to Ecuador in August 2010 to work for a different organization that works in the same region in Ecuador. The aim was to learn more about sustainable development from an organization that is far more advanced than ours, unfortunately things didn’t work out so I left in November, which was good as it meant more time for SelvaKids!
December 2010
Courtesy of some awesome fundraising by The Community College Chulmleigh, who sold Ecuadorian Jewllery and SelvaKids Christmas Cards at their Christmas Fair, we were able to provide Christmas Parcels to around 90 children in three of the schools that we work with. Janeth (Our Ecuadorian Coordinator) and her husband made the trip to the city of Ambato, about 5 hours from Tena, to buy the supplies as it is cheaper there (also cheaper without the white girls ). We decided to buy small toys, sweets, biscuits, chocolates etc and make up a bag of goodies for each of the kids. So on the Wednesday afternoon before we planned to make the schools trip, I headed to Janeth’s house where there was already a mean production line going on. I was directed to my position by Nayara (Janeth’s 8-year old daughter) and the next few hours were spent in concentrated silence as we made up 90 identical parcels, each containing about 15 different treats. We boxed them up and we were ready to go!

Trip to the Schools – December 17th/18th 2010
Community Reina del Cisne
Me, Helen, Janeth, her husband Vicente and their daughter Nayara set off to visit two of the communities; including a new one that myself and Helen hadn’t visited yet. After the usual 3 ½ hour bus ride out from Tena, along the bumpiest road known to man, we got out at our usual “stop” – which is actually a small wooden house at the side of the track, opposite what can only be described as a path into the depths of the jungle. Some of the kids were there to meet us, unfortunately no donkey to carry the loads this time, so we set off into the jungle…It is about an hour walk to Community Reina del Cisne, I would say we know the way having been there twice before, but unfortunately it still all just looks like jungle to me….luckily the kids were on hand! We got to the house where we were staying the night, the president of the community, dumped out stuff and quickly carried on the extra 30 minutes or so to get to the school. The houses that make up the community are not close together, and the kids can walk up to 1-2 hours every day to get to school, depending where they live. We got to the school about five, armed with the Christmas parcels we had and handed them out to the kids.
Last summer, myself and Helen made the decision that we want SelvaKids to become more sustainable. What we have done the last three years has been great, but there is a limit to how much two white girls going in and handing out school equipment can help. We decided we wanted to come up with more sustainable ways to help the communities – helping people to help themselves. With some advice from Janeth, we decided to trial a pilot micro-finance community bank in Community Reina del Cisne. This micro-finance project will allow members of the community to take out small loans to start small projects, such as planting maize or cocoa trees. They will have to repay the money at a low interest rate, with the interest being split between increasing the amount in the bank and the remainder providing educational resources. So this trip also involved presenting this idea to the president of the community, the teacher at the school and the parents. After the kids were happily munching on their Christmas parcels (no chance of holding out till Christmas day!), we got to work explaining the community bank, how it would work, and what they all thought. We got a really positive response, and everyone was really excited about a project that would mean they can generate their own incomes and help their kids themselves. We decided that the next week, Me, Helen, Janeth, the community president, school teacher and school treasurer would meet in Tena to discuss the details.
We also discussed our new idea of “Plant a Chocolate Tree”. It works on a similar principle to Oxfam’s buy a donkey etc. We proposed that if the school can donate a bit of land (without cutting down any jungle!!) that we will sell “Chocolate Trees” in England. For every chocolate tree bought in the UK, one will be planted in this piece of land. The profits will go to the community bank, meaning the amount will increase, more loans can be taken out and ultimately the school will make more money!
By the time we had discussed all this, it was getting dark, and without torches we still had to make our way back to the house where we were stayed. So we set off, but unfortunately it gets dark very quickly in Ecuador, so by 10 minutes in, it was already pitch black. Finding your way through the jungle in the pitch black, hoping you are not going to tread on any snakes or that you will simply get lost, is a little scary! We had just made it safely back to the house, where upon we heard an enormous snort and saw a dark beast heading towards us…me and Helen screamed, before realizing it was their pet pig….Not really a dangerous jungle beast….
After a large dinner cooked by the president’s wife, and seeing some baby parrots that the kids had rescued from somewhere, we braved the dark again to have a “shower” – which consisted of a large tank of water, 100 metres from the house, and a small bucket – very refreshing after a sweaty day of jungle walking! It was then time to settle down in out tents for some sleep to the music of the jungle…Unfortunately I had to get up in the night and go to the toilet….and once again found myself faced with the jungle pig. I think it thought I had some food, so chased me into the toilet where upon I screamed…and the community president found me face to face with his pet pig looking utterly terrified. I truly am a jungle girl 
7am the next day, and we were up having breakfast of freshly picked papaya. Bad timing, me and Helen had both fallen ill in the night, I had been up since 4am and was not feeling my perkiest. But it was time to move on, so we walked back to the road to catch the bus another 30 minutes down to Los Rios, where we due to catch a canoe to the next community…