Category Archives: Environmental sustainability

Tilapia tank project provides sustainable food source

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Members of the Rotary Club of Lake in the Hills (district 6440) were just down to implement an ambitious food security and sustainability project to benefit the students of Ak’ Tenamit’s Father Tom Moran Education Center and, in the long-term, their communities. They worked alongside students and teachers from the agricultural department to build two 4′ x 24′ tilapia tanks that will not only supplement students’ meals but serve as a practical classroom where students will gain experience maintaining a project that can provide income and food for their communities. In the coming months, students and staff hope to build an additional tank using their new skills and the materials Rotarians provided.

Preparing the area where the tanks were built

Filling the two side-by-side tanks with water

The tanks are a great fit for our students and their communities because tilapia is a nutritious fish, easy to care for, and the tank design is extremely sustainable.  The pumps in the pond filter water from the fish tanks up into a series of gravel beds in which a variety of plants and vegetables will be grown. The waste from the fish serves as a fertilizer for the plants and these plants filter the water before it returns to the fish tank.

Students don't waste time passing gravel

Filling the gravel beds

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Graduate advises village elders

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We’d like to tell you about two graduates who work double duty serving their community.  This week let’s meet Walter Xol Contreras.  He graduated from Ak’ Tenamit with a degree in Sustainable Tourism and works full-time coordinating Ak’ Tenamit’s HIV awareness programs.  Walter lives at our staff boarding facility during the week and returns home to his village, Plan Grande Tatín, on the weekends to volunteer with Tatín’s community’s tourism project, Centro Ecoturistico la Cueva del Tigre (The Tiger’s Cave Eco-tourism Center).  He also represents Plan Grande Tatin in front of the municipality.

He advises project leaders and leads workshops about administration, customer service, guiding, and conservation.  Under his guidance, the Eco-tourism Center will soon open a restaurant to cater to visitors and offer bicycle tours as part of the tour package.  Profits will be invested back into the community to improve the primary school and maintain infrastructure.  He is also the Secretary of CATCI, an organization that oversees and supports community tourism projects in the Rio Dulce area.  Walter emphasizes that,

“I do not want to be a leader or be superior; only an adviser and serve as the right hand of the community.”

The skills Walter learned at Ak’ Tenamit also prepared him to serve as the link between his village and the municipality.  At Ak’ Tenamit he learned to speak Spanish, write proposals and budgets, and work within local legal frameworks.  When his village’s primary school needed a new roof, he successfully petitioned the mayor to provide materials for the roof.  Village elders called upon him to draft the proposal and budget and approach the mayor.  Why?  Because they do not speak Spanish, know how to draft proposals, or use a computer, all of which were essential skills for approaching the municipality.  Walter has also been instrumental in empowering women in his community and now half of the community’s board of directors are women.

Walter illustrates the goal of Ak’ Tenamit’s education approach: to empower young people to foster self-sustaining growth in their own communities.

Students start local NGO

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In 2007, a group of Ak’ Tenamit’s students began the organization Aprosarstun (Ap-row-sar-stoon) before even graduation from Ak’ Tenamit.  They were inspired to do so after attending a meeting with several institutions who were discussing ways to improve conditions in the nearby Sarstun region.

Aprosarstun’s mission is to improve livelihoods in the 16 communities that make up the Sarstun watershed region while simultaneously preserving the environment.  They work to prevent deforestation and reduce water contamination and overfishing.   They are also improving the health and quality of life of women who spend hours cooking over open-air fire pits.

How do they do it?

  • Replanting trees
  • Installing wood-saving cook stoves to replace open-air fire pits
  • Giving presentations in communities discussing the importance of conserving resources
  • Giving presentations at Ak’ Tenamit’s school and encourage students to discuss the importance of conservation with their families and communities

You can read more about their work at http://www.ecologic.org/en/where-we-work/guatemala/sarstun.

Students bring sustainable farming to their communities

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7th graders create to-scale models of the most appropriate farm layouts for their communities

When you’ve had a rainy season like Guatemala has this year, landslides and mudslides are to be expected.  But when they cause as many deaths as they did this year it makes you wonder if anything can be done to prevent them.  Well, yes, something can be done.  Soil erosion was the cause root of many mudslides and traditional farming practices are partly to blame for the erosion.  Replacing traditional hillside farming practices with terracing techniques and eliminating slash-and-burn farming would reduce erosion and the likelihood of deadly mudslides.  However, when every mountainside in Guatemala is covered in such farms (or so it seems), spreading the word about these techniques is a daunting task- but it is not impossible.

Seventh graders at Ak’ Tenamit have eagerly joined this effort.  They spent several weeks learning how to design farm plots so that they yield the most productive harvest.  An important component of this course was learning to balance the desire for productivity with the need for sustainability and environmental protection.  Students didn’t just learn about these techniques; they created a model showing how fields in their own communities should be designed based elevation, the slope of the land, soil type, the size/shape of the plot, the crops to be planted, and the location of buildings.

More importantly, during their vacation, students were assigned to present their findings to their communities.  In addition to presenting their designs, they led workshops about terracing and explained the damage that traditional techniques cause.  Students reported that they were well received and that their communities truly appreciated the information.  Let’s hope that this is the beginning of the end of soil erosion and mudslides in Rio Dulce.