For many years, Hans Gotz worked as a development worker in Ecuador. In the late 1990s, he worked with Friends of Ecuador president Josh Busby on organic quinoa export to the United States. He’s now working in Zambia with Bread for the World on a community project and is seeking help to support community projects there. This is a guest post from Hans.
We urgently need water in the Chilobwe community in Kalulushi, Zambia, Africa.
A borehole with a 55m liner costs 2300USD + hand pump 450USD + installation and materials about 200USD.
In the second phase we would like to install a solar pump with batteries and an elevated tank.
Please let me tell you about that:
We have decided to finish my cycle of work as I started as a development worker, now with Bread for the World. For the past year we have been working with Adriana here in Zambia at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF), a very well-known institution in Zambia and Africa for its 65 years of training and capacity building in many different areas.
Due to the needs of the people (at the moment there is a terrible famine due to the worst drought in many decades) they have decided to expand the training to include sustainable, resilient agriculture. We have a training farm where 60 students are currently living and working. To implement this training and to develop the training farm, Bread for the World sent me (similar to my work with Escuelas Radiofonicas del Ecuador (ERPE).
MEF gave 117 families 3 hectares of land each, thinking they could improve their living conditions, but the people don’t know anything about farming, they burn to plant a little maize in monoculture and mainly cut down all the trees/bushes to make charcol for sale. Most of them only eat once a day, they have to walk long distances to fetch water, the school is far away.
This is my third line of action with MEF to help this community develop. We are training the young people on the farm, some friends from Germany are funding a trainer to live in the community, work with the people and build a model house with his wife and child. We have 3ha of community land where we have started to develop a community centre.
We have dug a 15m hand well but unfortunately it has dried up, digging deeper is too dangerous or requires a high investment in casing.
We did a technical study with experts and found another spot in the communal area where we should see abundant water, ideal for the borehole.
The community is very committed to the work, they have made more than 3000 bricks by hand for the trainer’s house, and they are working hard with him in the field, preparing for the planting of the new PFUMVUDZA or family plots system, because we must plant before 25.11.2024.
But we need water, we need the watering hole!
Please help us raise funds. A GoFundMe page has been set up here with the appeal for support. Please help if you can!
If you have questions about the project, feel free to reach out to Hans directly via email.
I hope you are doing well. My name is Rachel Hyman, and I work with the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Access to Finance Program (F2F A2F) at IESC. We work with volunteer experts to provide technical assistance to financial institutes and agricultural businesses in Kenya, Tanzania, and Liberia. You can find more information about our program on the attached brochure and fact sheet.
I’m reaching out because I believe our program is very relevant to your organization’s values and the interests of your members, and we are hoping to connect with professionals interested in volunteering to enhance access to finance for smallholder farmers, women, and youth in our core countries. We are looking for volunteers representing a wide variety of fields and skill sets. These include (but are not limited to) business development, banking and finance, marketing, economics, strategic planning, factory management, agronomy, resource mobilization, financial management, human resources, etc.
If there is anyone in your organization who may be interested in our program, I would greatly appreciate being connected! Likewise, if there is any general interest, I would love to explore an avenue for sharing upcoming volunteer assignments with your organization.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thank you for your time.
This is a guest post from Alan Adams, Asesor Internacional, Mushuk Yuyay
Last spring, we posted a story on Mushuk Yuyay and our efforts to fundraise to support them. We only raised about $100. Please consider a donation. We’re hoping to raise at least $1500 to support a Field Day showing off the Mushuk Yuyay experimental farm and all of the crops available there. If you like to donate to Mushuk via Friends, you can visit Friends of Ecuador’s Donate page and PayPal link.
Mushuk Yuyay in Cañar, Ecuador will host the IX World Quinua Congress on June 17, 18, 19 & 20 of 2025 to coincide with the Inti Raymi celebration. This will be the biggest event in the history of Cañar with universities, NGOs, businesses, government agencies, marketers and tourists participating. Musicians, artists, dancers, performers of every kind will make the festivities bright and exciting. There will be new and traditional foods, including quinua pasta, quinua and amaranth bread, amaranth energy bars, and much more besides the foods that Returned Peace Corps Volunteers remember and love about the Sierra. This will also be a community event featuring the farmers and local crafters, but most of all, you will see the astounding transformation that the people themselves have brought about over the past few decades.
Mushuk Yuyay would like Friends of Ecuador to be an essential part of this World Quinua Congress by helping to sponsor a vital component of the program. Over the years, Friends of Ecuador has helped Mushuk Yuyay while the association was struggling to stay alive. Now Mushuk Yuyay is a growing economic and social force in southern Ecuador. Now, we are hoping that Friends of Ecuador will be put their name on the Field Day at the Mushuk Yuyay experimental farm, Finca La Posta, to demonstrate the advances in agroecological cultivation of quinua and other crops for the health and stability of the region. It is projected that 350 attendees will participate in this activity. The total cost of this event will be $2,100. We are asking Friends of Ecuador to provide just half, $1,500, by the end of 2024, to make the Field Day possible.
Worrisome news of blackouts in Ecuador: “Since mid-September 2024, Ecuador has been experiencing power outages, up to 14 hours per day, across its entire territory.”
Some of it appears to be related to droughts which are affecting hydroelectric produciton: “According to the Ecuadorian digital media organization La Defensa, chats between Arrobo and Noboa reveal that the Minister of Energy warned President Noboa that droughts and limited rainfall would affect the hydroelectric plants, which provide the majority of Ecuador’s electricity. Most hydroelectric energy production depends on rainwater flow as the plants require a base amount of water to spin the turbines that generate electricity. Arrobo stressed to him that if the drought continued, the hydroelectric plants “will not hold up.”
We received a kind donation of three Oswaldo Moncayo paintings from a Brazil RPCV whose father purchased them while traveling around Ecuador in the 1950s. What should we do with them? Auction them off to support projects? Donate them to a museum in Ecuador?
I am genuinely excited to connect with you as the new Country Director for Peace Corps Ecuador. As someone who embarked on this transformative journey as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama from 2003 to 2005, I can truly appreciate the incredible impact of service and connection. Completing my service filled me with a profound sense of accomplishment and clarity about my own purpose. I realized that, through service, I had accessed something greater than myself. The experience shaped my life, guiding me to where I am today, and I’m eager to support fellow Volunteers in their journeys. Our Volunteers in Ecuador are carrying this spirit forward, enacting meaningful change as they partner with local communities in areas like health, education, and youth development. They play a crucial role in empowering Ecuadorians to take charge of their own futures.
Ecua 130 had their swearing in ceremony in July, and we currently have 103 Volunteers in service. We have three programs currently in the Peace Corps Ecuador portfolio: Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), Community Health and Wellness, and Youth and Families Development. We are also thrilled to share with you that 3 Response Volunteers swear in on Thursday, October 24th and will serve for 1 year. By spring we should level out at a population of 140 Peace Corps Volunteers in Ecuador.
As we embrace this mission, I want to underscore the importance of your support as Friends and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Your experiences, insights, and connections are invaluable to our mission. You understand the significance of Goals 2 and 3, appreciating that the relationships forged between Volunteers and community members transform lives on both sides.
Our dedicated team at Peace Corps Ecuador is committed to ensuring the success of our Volunteers and strengthening the communities we serve. Together, we strive to promote inclusivity, equity, and sustainable development. Cultivating a trusting and open environment is a top priority for me, and I encourage each of you to share your experiences, ideas, and any concerns you may have. Your voice is vital in the continuous journey toward growth and success.
As we move forward, I invite you to join us in making a meaningful difference. With your support, we can create lasting change in Ecuador while nurturing the incredible spirit of service that binds us all together.
This is a guest post from Alan Adams, who served in Ecuador from 1967-1969
Evaluating seed.
In the province of Cañar, in southern Ecuador, an association of farmers, La Asociación de Productores de Semillas y Alimentos Nutricionales Andinos Mushuk Yuyay was incorporated in 1994 as a non-profit. It has been serving the farming community of the area ever since, while growing slowly and steadily year by year. This association grew out of the struggle begun in the 1960s during the Ecuadorian agrarian reform. It grew out of the dreams and the vision of the campesino hacienda workers as they achieved their freedom.
It grew through the work of the farmers as they, bit by bit, improved the depleted soils and tried to make a living on the tiny plots of land. They educated themselves. They educated their children. They evaluated the conditions. They made difficult and risky decisions. The Association was named Mushuk Yuyay because that means New Thought. They looked at their reality with a new vision. First improving seed, then developing agroecological methods based on Indigenous knowledge mixed with scientific research. Despite lack of resources or outside assistance, the results were astounding.
Nicolás Pichazaca, founder of Mushuk Yuyay. He found my email address and contacted me in 2013.
These results were what convinced me to join their efforts when, after 50 years of absence, I received an invitation to finish what we had started in the Peace Corps in the 1960s. It will never be finished, but here we are, still going. With the spirit of service of the Friends of Ecuador, we will find more results. The task is, indeed, still towering. Not our task. That belongs to the people who are living it. We are here to help and encourage, to be in the middle of it.
To understand the struggle. And, every day, though I do this remotely, I feel like I’m still in the Peace Corps. First with improved seed, developed through traditional methods, then with homemade fertilizers, adapting to climate change, dealing with economic downturns, and the devastation of emigration, Mushuk Yuyay walked toward their goal.
After years of planning and negotiation, they were able to build a processing plant for their crops. They convinced BanEcuador to lend them money. They developed their own brand. Alli Mikuna means Good Food, and the products can be found throughout Ecuador. Heifer Project saw their work and has contributed machinery and conducted education programs in fertilizer production. Washington State University is conducting participatory research with Mushuk Yuyay in quinua and barley improvement. New varieties have been developed.
Probably most importantly for the economic stability of the region, Mushuk Yuyay is this year able to pay farmers cash for their crops at harvest. Farmers used to take whatever they could get, pay a coyote, and leave the country. Now farmers are supporting their families, buying seed and fertilizer, and planting again. Everybody complains about emigration. Mushuk Yuyay is doing something about it. Years ago, Ecuadorian universities had no interest in Indigenous farmers. Now university students are visiting and doing projects in the Cañari community. La Universidad del Azuay is helping to design the ecotourism facilities Mushuk Yuyay is building. Agricultural, business administration, anthropology, and even theater students have visited.
La Universidad del Azuay also facilitated the collaboration of the University of Milan, Italy to help Mushuk Yuyay develop pasta making utilizing quinua and amaranth in high protein products. The University of Milan sent a pasta making expert, a nutritionist, and machinery expert to advise in establishing the Mushuk Yuyay food lab.
Pasta expert from Milan instructing the local nutritionist and food product development specialist.
This would not happen without increased production. Emigration has caused a serious labor shortage. This has resulted in much crop land being converted to pasture for cattle which is causing an ecological disaster. Mushuk Yuyay is helping remaining farmers pool their labor and resources to plant more quinua.
There are 13 community savings and loan groups that are operating throughout the province of Cañar, even one in Azuay. Mushuk Yuyay is preparing them for support of TCP Global which works with Rotary Clubs worldwide. These groups are planting quinua and other crops that support Alli Mikuna. Now they have markets. One group is composed of returned emigres who bought land at the lower elevation of the province to produce coffee and cacao to flavor quinua products.
Pasual Pichazaca (left), administrator of Mushuk Yuyay, working with a savings and loan group.
As a result of this, quinua production and marketing has risen. Not sharply. One hectare, one bag, one dollar at a time. Not for export or profit, but for the health and well-being of the local population. They will not repeat the mistakes of other quinua producers who have ruined their land to squeeze one more dollar of sales out while the people suffer from malnutrition. Mushuk Yuyay’s motto is “Health is the best business.”
They swear that healthy eating got them through the pandemic. As mentioned above, others are noticing. Now, last year at the VIII World Quinua Congress in Potosí, Bolivia, Mushuk Yuyay was chosen to host the IX World Quinua Congress in March of 2025. This is tremendous honor, a wonderful opportunity, and gigantic challenge. Mushuk Yuyay is putting together a program celebrating the Andean origins, the worldwide present, and the wide open future of quinua. But, they are concentrating on the role of the farmer producer and the health of the consumer.
If you like to donate to Mushuk via Friends, you can visit Friends of Ecuador’s Donate page and PayPal link.
They are celebrating the cultural experience of Indigenous food production by bringing in producers from other Andean areas. They are hoping to include Indigenous peoples of other food traditions as well to show that there are viable alternatives to the globalized over processed products on the store shelves. This is going to be a truly unique World Quinua Congress.
From the sapi, the root, of the grains. I would like to invite Friends of Ecuador to be an integral part of this Congress. I would like to see Friends of Ecuador’s logo and name among the sponsors that will be celebrated during the Congress. Friends of Ecuador has done so much to help Mushuk Yuyay in the past.
If people want to participate by contributing individually or through Friends of Ecuador, they would be welcome to join. I am always ready to speak to anyone interested in Mushuk Yuyay of the Congress. Mushuk Yuyay is providing hope to the youth, job opportunities, economic stability for the region. It is a worthwhile investment for many reasons. Mushuk Yuyay is the good news in Ecuador.
Education workshop at Mushuk Yuyay
If you like to donate to Mushuk via Friends, you can visit Friends of Ecuador’s Donate page and PayPal link.
It’s been a minute since we produced a new newsletter. We, Ecuador, and the world have been through a globe-altering pandemic. Peace Corps Volunteers were evacuated from posts all around the world and only recently returned to countries in March of 2022.
As many of you know, Ecuador experienced severe impacts of COVID in 2020, and it has more recently been beset by violence because of the rising presence of drug gangs. The new Ecuadorian president Noboa has his work cut out for him.
Amidst this, Peace Corps has returned to Ecuador and is sending volunteers back to posts. Friends of Ecuador continues to support projects in Ecuador. There are also some new short-term volunteer opportunities with Peace Corps Response in Ecuador that some of you may be interested in. They are in the climate and conservation space, one of them being in the Galápagos.
We are especially proud of our on-going partnership with Conciencia Amazónica and the various projects of RPCV David Goucher. Our newsletter features a story from him on their incredible work, and our newly rebuilt webpage features photos from some of their important conservation and sustainable agriculture work in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
We are also looking for a new treasurer (see the story in our newsletter) and get in touch if you are interested.
Sincerely, Josh Busby
President, Friends of Ecuador
In the province of Morona Santiago, more than 1000 species of birds have been observed and recorded on eBird (a database managed by Cornell University), representing more than half of the total species of birds in the entire country of Ecuador. Throughout the last 50 years, on a global level, the observation of birds (known as “birding”) has become a tourism phenomenon, with the positive result of impulsing conservation of habitats to maintain and recuperate forests across the world. In Ecuador, eco-tourism has been an important source of income specifically to the Galapagos Islands, but over the last decade, adventurous tourists have made the most rural reaches of the Amazon their destinations to enjoy little explored areas.
CONCIENCIA AMAZÓNICA has made environmental education a primary goal of its foundation projects, using birding as an activity to captivate the younger generations. Almost every child in any school in the province has a family member who owns a farm, primarily used for cattle production using non-sustainable, non-environmentally friendly ancestral practices. While cattle production represents over half of the main source of income of the population, applying new methods and a new business model, model farms in San Juan Bosco are presented to demonstrate that an equilibrium between production and conservation is possible. Visits to these farms include a detailed explanation of the processes undertaken to change pastures, improve beef genetics, as well as the “produce the best” business model, all while maintaining streams clean with natural reforestation, and the resulting re-establishment of flora and fauna. A farm visit also entails observation of birds, insects, and any other creature encountered while walking the property, demonstrating first hand the abundance of biodiversity adjacent to cattle, as well as emphasizing the eco-tourism aspect of the farm, a sustainable and even profitable, alternative income generating activity.
Several videos have been produced based on resulting videos of wildlife cameras, completing the visit with the demonstration of an entire trophic chain reestablished in areas of conservation in just 10 years, including 2 natural corridors, reconnecting 2 previously isolated tracts of primary forest, to a much larger area of rainforest, allowing for repopulation of such animals as the South American Cougar (Puma concolor), the Mountain Tapir (Tapirus pinchaque), the Collared Peccary (Dicotyles tajacu), and even the rare Northern Pudu (Pudu mephistophiles).
Thanks to Jack and James Agett (RPCV, Ecuador 1966), a new Nature Preserve, Agett-Geary Nature Preserve, has been purchased, currently encompassing 2 cattle farms, forming 300 hectares (750 acres). The Nature Preserve will be legally declared a Private Reserve and Bird Sanctuary following an extensive biodiversity assessment across the vast property, which ranges in altitude 3800 ft to over 10,000 ft above sea-level; at these altitudes, we expect to observe the rare Spectacled Bear, the only bear species in South America. This area will be transformed into a large scale, model project of conservation, area of continual scientific study, and an ecotourism destination in the rural Amazon region of Ecuador.
FRIENDS OF ECUADOR has been an essential collaborator with Conciencia Amazonica; since 2020 during the pandemic, funds were raised in the US to assist isolated Amazon communities with essential food supplies, as well as seeds for producing familiar gardens. Since then, our collaborations have resulted in 6 figure annual donations for community projects, environmental education, scientific investigations, as well as the Agett-Geary Nature Preserve. Our areas of work have expanded now into 6 of the 12 counties in the Morona Santiago Province.
Some great Peace Corps Response opportunities. There are some openings in Ecuador in the environment & climate sector that some of you may be interested in.
The Galapagos Conservancy Foundation in Ecuador has requested the support of a Peace Corps Response Volunteer (PCRV) to serve as a Conservation and Research Advisor. The Galapagos Conservancy Foundation promotes and carries out activities for conserving the habitat of the Galapagos Islands, as the region has already been impacted by climate change. The Galapagos Conservancy Foundation seeks to apply science to guide the restoration of existing giant tortoise populations and land iguanas by working directly with park rangers in monitoring activities in the tortoises’ life areas and in the management of the breeding center in captivity and private farms. The Foundation is planning to invest a greater effort in the San Cristobal Island where there are ten different populations of tortoises, and where the greatest number of threats to these populations still persist.
ChildFund International USA in Ecuador has requested the support of a Peace Corps Response Volunteer (PCRV) to serve as a Climate Change and Environmental Education Specialist. ChildFund works with children and adolescents to grow up healthy and in a safe space free of violence through educational programming. ChildFund operates in rural areas including Carchi, Pichincha, Imbabura, Cotopaxi and Tungurahua. In partnership with a local social nonprofit, the Federation of Community Organizations from Imbabura (FOCI), ChildFund intends to implement an environmental education curriculum for children and youth to generate awareness of climate change impact and care of the environment.
GAMMA in Ecuador has requested the support of a Peace Corps Response Volunteer (PCRV) to serve as a Conservation and Sustainability Advisor. GAMMA is a non-profit organization that works on conservation projects, which includes research, training, awareness and direct action for the care of high elevation meadows in the Adean region. GAMMA seeks to develop income generation alternatives and sustainable conservation policies through comprehensive conservation plans. At the Center for Encounters with Nature and Social Therapy (CEN), GAMMA supports clean energy systems for electricity generation and water management as well as income generation through ecological tourism.
