University Service with Rural Farmers to Generate Income and Restore Watersheds
Collaborators: Asociación Fénix, Rural Nicaraguan Communities, Portland State University, and Green Empowerment
Two teams of students from Portland State University are working with the Portland, OR based NGO Green Empowerment and Nicaraguan partner Asociación Fénix to provide renewable energy driven drip irrigation systems for family fruit and vegetable plots. As GeoTourists, the students will help Green Empowerment and the Asociación Fénix provide rural farming families “agro-forestry” training on: caring for forest and fruit tree nurseries, performing fruit tree grafting, setting up drip irrigation systems, operating worm composting bins to improve soil quality, operating and ...
Sobre Você
Dados de Contato
Título
Mr.
Nome
Jason
Sobrenome
Selwitz
Your job title
Director of Service Learning
Nome da sua organização
Green Empowerment; on behalf of Nicaraguan partner NGO Asociación Fénix
Organization type
501(c)(3)
Orçamento anual/moeda
around $500,000 per year
Mailing address
140 SW Yamhill Street, Portland, Oregon, USA
Telephone number
(503) 284-5774
Postal/Zip Code
97204
Country
Nicarágua
Website
Endereço de email
Endereço de email alternativo
Alternative email address
Sua ideia
Este será o endereço utilizado para posicionar sua inscrição no mapa.
Street Address
Bramadero
City
Managua
Estado/Província
Managua
Postal/Zip Code
Country
Nicarágua
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Community Organization
Year innovation began
2008
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Nature, Culinary or agritourism, Educação, General destination stewardship/management, Outros.
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
University Service with Rural Farmers to Generate Income and Restore Watersheds
Descreva Sua Ideia
Collaborators: Asociación Fénix, Rural Nicaraguan Communities, Portland State University, and Green Empowerment
Two teams of students from Portland State University are working with the Portland, OR based NGO Green Empowerment and Nicaraguan partner Asociación Fénix to provide renewable energy driven drip irrigation systems for family fruit and vegetable plots. As GeoTourists, the students will help Green Empowerment and the Asociación Fénix provide rural farming families “agro-forestry” training on: caring for forest and fruit tree nurseries, performing fruit tree grafting, setting up drip irrigation systems, operating worm composting bins to improve soil quality, operating and ...
IDB/Fomin
Si perteneces a un pais de Latinoamerica y el Caribe tienes la oportunidad de presentar tu iniciativa para acceder a fondos para innovaciones en turismo sostenible del BID/FOMIN (para mayor informacion leer la seccion sobre la oportunidad BID/FOMIN en la pagina principal del Desafio).
Deseo postularme.
Si perteneces a un pais de Latinoamerica y el Caribe tienes la oportunidad de presentar tu iniciativa para acceder a fondos para innovaciones en turismo sostenible del BID/FOMIN (para mayor informacion leer la seccion sobre la oportunidad BID/FOMIN en la pagina principal del Desafio).
Consumidores (viajeros), Mayoristas, Agentes detallistas, Operadores de Turismo, Prestatarios de servicios turísticos, Atractivos naturales y culturales.
Indica cuales de estas tematicas cubre tu innovacion (elige todas aquellas opciones que apliquen)
Planificación y Gestión de destinos, Innovación y diversificación en el desarrollo de productos turísticos.
INOVAÇÃO
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
For rural farming families in central Nicaragua to boost incomes, improve nutrition, increase gender equity, and restore watersheds through renewable energy tied agro-forestry projects.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
Collaborators: Asociación Fénix, Rural Nicaraguan Communities, Portland State University, and Green Empowerment
Two teams of students from Portland State University are working with the Portland, OR based NGO Green Empowerment and Nicaraguan partner Asociación Fénix to provide renewable energy driven drip irrigation systems for family fruit and vegetable plots. As GeoTourists, the students will help Green Empowerment and the Asociación Fénix provide rural farming families “agro-forestry” training on: caring for forest and fruit tree nurseries, performing fruit tree grafting, setting up drip irrigation systems, operating worm composting bins to improve soil quality, operating and maintaining renewable energy systems, monitoring water and soil quality, and processing fruit to dry or make jam. Initially, the projects help farmers boost production and increase crop diversity. As a result, health and nutrition in children will improve and school attendance will rise. In return for receiving the renewable energy powered drip irrigation systems, farming families will care for forest trees to replenish local watersheds. As they regenerate their landscape, rural farming families will realize increased incomes.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
These projects are innovative because they train multi-disciplinary teams of university students to share specific beneficial skills directly with rural farming families. The projects are innovative because they are holistic -- integrating renewable energy into an income generating activity. In addition to raising levels of nutrition and gender equity, human elements, the projects will lead to the on-going monitoring and restoration of the environment. These projects harness the resources of committed teams of students for a project with immediate short term, and long term, beneficial impacts. Furthermore, due to similar community needs throughout the region, these projects can be replicated with a variety of university GeoTourists and rural farming family partners.
Impacto
Crianças & Jovens
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
Green Empowerment and Asociación Fénix have partnered to offer GeoTourism programs with universities since 2007. However, now, when the students go to Nicaragua they go with mindset of what innovative product or process can they help develop when they return to the US. It is this post-Nicaragua experience that drives future projects. The students work with Green Empowerment to do research and draft projects based on the experiences and conversations had in Nicaragua with Asociación Fénix and the rural farming families. The farming families and Asociación Fénix prioritize and give input into the projects to minimize negative impacts. In future trips, we will install water and soil data logging equipment to track changes to the environment and ensure positive benefits are progressing.
Crianças & Jovens
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Asociación Fénix has regular site visits in the communities they provide on-going services for. Monthly, they also bring the project committee leaders from each village to Managua to share updates and lessons learned. Individual farmers and the committee representatives advise Asociación Fénix has to how projects are progressing, what the challenges are, and identify many areas where further attention is needed.
Crianças & Jovens
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Through the service projects. Through the efforts of the farming families, especially their children, and the university students, we are able to achieve projects greater than ourselves to immediately provide electricity, improve water access, or facilitate the delivery of an appropriate technology. Their is generally great satisfaction in working between cultures to, for example, get an improved stove built or plant hundreds of forest and fruit trees during an afternoon.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
By tying economic development to environmental quality, we are able to make the linkage between the value of ecosystem services and human prosperity. For instance, if all the trees in an area are cut down, they can see the direct linkages between human action, erosion, and water flow -- especially during periods of drought or heavy rain. When the farmers get assistance to boost production, they realize they need to help ensure soil and water quality or else they will not have the resources to survive.
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Currently, the initiatives are financed by a mix of fees-for-service, donations, and grants. In 2008, Portland State University received a two-year grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance to work with Green Empowerment and Asociación Fénix. We are in the process of applying for more grants. In future iterations of these projects, we may be able to loan the renewable energy equipment to the farmers, and as they boost yields and income, they would pay Asociación Fénix back for the drip irrigation systems, thus reseeding a "revolving fund" that can be tapped to replicate the projects with other farmers. There is precedence for this as Asociación Fénix currently manages a household solar revolving fund which gives out no-interest loans -- each family negotiates specific terms with Asociación Fénix for up to three year periods. I can make Green Empowerment's annual budget figures available if needed.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
There is demand. What is needed are more pilot projects to prove farmers are able to boost production to the point they can pay back loans to recoup the costs of the renewable energy systems and keep the motivation to reforest their watersheds.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
By working through Asociación Fénix, much of the community education and organizing work, that would typically be done as a smaller element to the projects, is a priority. We are working with communities where we have existing partnerships on micro-hydro power or solar water delivery systems. Green Empowerment's development model is to work through an established and respected NGO partner whom we can develop a long term partnership. The NGO partner, Asociación Fénix in this case, works with the rural farming communities to set the priorities for projects. On the university student side, cost can often be a barrier to participation.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
As stated in another section, we would like to install soil and water data logging equipment so that when we travel to the project sites with subsequent student teams we can track our progress and challenges. Having this data to review and make conclusions, in addition to, conducting interviews with the farming families will ensure we are building on our best practices to ensure success as we replicate the projects with other communities in need.
A História
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
My name is Jason Selwitz, Director of Service Learning with Green Empowerment. I like to think I represent the priorities and best interests of Asociación Fénix and the rural farming families they work with. In 2007, I graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a Master's in Regenerative Studies where I focused on wastewater treatment, water issues, and renewable energy. In the late 1990's I served in the Philippines with the Peace Corps and co-founded the Palawan Conservation Corps to train young adults with the skills to grow their own food and conserve their local forest and marine reserves.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
The idea for this type of innovative agro-forestry/watershed/service learning project comes from working with the rural farming families, seeing and hearing about their challenges, consultation with Green Empowerment's NIcaraguan partner NGO Asociación Fénix, and much reflection, discussion, and research with the teams of students/faculty.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
The university students (the GeoTourists) travel to central Nicaragua to learn about pressing social and environmental issues. They work alongside rural farming families to install improved cook stoves, household solar systems, plant hundreds of trees, teach children about hand washing and dental hygiene, install biogas digesters, set-up small wind systems, tour small organic coffee plantations, study solar water pumping and micro-hydro renewable energy systems, and work on drip irrigation systems. In the process, they have a meaningful cultural exchange, prepare and taste foods they would not have otherwise, and are able to experience life embedded in rural communities like no other opportunity could provide.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
*Training in dry tropical forest and fruit tree care
*Discounts on drip irrigation supplies
*Wholesale deals from renewable energy suppliers
*Historians who can film and document the projects
*Funding to subsidize student travel costs and seed future projects
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