Semana Santa in Ayacucho brings many visitors...but do they offer help or harm to developing communities?

After I spoke last week with British teacher Sue Allsworth about living and working in Peru, I started to wonder if all these gringo visitors were bringing help or harm to the country. What are tour operators doing to make sure that travelers to South American don’t exploit or damage the local communities they visit?

To find out more, I got in touch with Lloyd Boutcher. He’s Director of Latin American Operations at Sunvil, a specialist tour operator with a 5-star rating from Britain’s Association of Independent Travel Operators:

“When we’re operating programs, the first step is looking at who our suppliers are and who we’re operating through. We pick a local partner, trying to give some of the smaller guys a chance. With these smaller operations, there’s a chance for us to craft the product and differentiate it. In turn, they tend to contract freelancers and spread the tourism revenue around among drivers, guides and other locals.” Of course, this kind of close work with local people is even more sensitive when the communities involved are indigenous.

For Lloyd’s clients, a stay in a remote jungle lodge is far better than a night in a Marriott – but the challenge is to preserve a culture even while opening it up to foreign travelers. Lloyd gives the example of the Napo Wildlife Centre in Ecuador’s Amazon basin,

“Of a tribe of 200 people, only eight wanted to set up the centre. It was hard for them to make a case, but the centre has been a huge success, both commercially and in terms of preserving the tribe’s identity. Now the whole community is behind the scheme.  Of course, it’s a tricky start with indigenous communities sometimes. When a group of travelers were trying to spot a howler monkey in the trees, a local guide thought he was being helpful by killing one with a blowpipe!”

In addition to their own guidelines for work with local communities, Sunvil also contributes to the Travel Foundation, a charitable organization that works on behalf of the UK travel industry. In Brazil, the Foundation collaborates with Estrela, a local charity which runs community tours to benefit inner-city residents. Both Lloyd at Sunvil and Georgina Davies of the Travel Foundation highlighted Estrela as a shining example of an operation where the balance between the interests of tourists and the local community is just right.

“Some favela tours [like the one described here by former La Vida Idealist editor Celeste Hamilton] have a terrible reputation – they’re really exploitative,” Lloyd told me. “I’ve walked away from such tours, but with Estrela the overall aim is to benefit local communities and bring together people of different cultures.”

Georgina Davies of the Travel Foundation added: “Estrela’s tours are a very special alternative to the usual beach and carnival experience of Salvador and for local people they provide a chance to learn new skills, give something back to their community and ultimately increase their income. Tourism is a unique form of trade in that it is largely free of the tariff barriers which often prevent poor communities trading themselves out of poverty. We support efforts to maximize the potential of tourism to alleviate poverty and help traditional ways of life and skills to thrive.”

Matt Finch is an educational consultant from the U.K. and is currently working at the San Domingo Savio primary school in Peru. For more on his experiences, check out his blog. To learn more about Sunvil,Estrela and the Travel Foundation, please click the embedded links.

My husband and I putting all our weight on the log to create a bench

My husband and I are opening a coffee shop on Saturday. After a lot of frustrating arguments and fantastic accomplishments, we look back on this process with awe and thankfulness that it is over and a whole new life is about to begin. El Buho, the Owl, is a name we picked from a biblical passage about owls, drinks and deserts in the book of Isaiah.

This is a nonprofit coffee shop that will raise funds for a community center in an impoverished town nearby. The shop will also be a place for artists to hang their work and sell it. We have a book trade, couches, and Internet.

Saturday’s opening, like any worthwhile venture, is simultaneously exciting and nerve-racking. The intestinal butterflies are loudly questioning: Will we know the recipes for each drink well enough when five people are standing in line? Will we know the right words in Spanish to explain these drinks? Will there be enough seating? Will anyone come? Will too many people come? Maybe if I taste all ten drinks on our menu, I can drown the incessant questions.

El Buho: cafe, libros, arte

Never did I ever think I’d be running a coffee shop. I’m half-Italian, but I’m not a coffee lover. Never did I ever think about the possibility of owning a business to give back to a community. I’m college-educated, but never took one business class. But this is the beauty of Latin America. If you are an amateur, you are an expert. If you know a little, you know a lot. And the possibilities are endless. The excitement fluttering around this little town, between the international rock climbing community and the local Mexican community is energizing.

I have never felt more intrinsically connected to a project. It’s been like watching a metamorphosis cycle take place in the mirror. Thoughts, words, plans, pieces of notebook paper transform into painted walls, espresso machinery, stools and bars and curtains.

As these physical doors officially open, I feel we are on the brink of something beautiful. In numerous ways — we’re about to take flight.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

Blanca is a 53-year-old Paraguayan grandmother, store owner and farmer.  She loves my husband Andrew like a son, and me like a daughter-in-law.  Blanca has held me when I cried, washed my underwear, and inspired me to be a better woman.  Now she is standing in front of me, wearing my old camouflage capri pants and beaming.

Our tree fort in Paraguay had been stripped bare of furniture, the lights disconnected.  The only residents left were memories and cobwebs; even the mice moved on.  Blanca assures me that she’ll clean it out, but for now we’ll stay with her and her husband.  I forgot how simple, yet difficult life is in rural Paraguay is, up at dawn to make a fire and draw water.  A day filled with washing, milking, smoke and children, but also laughter, gossip and shared food.

Blanca and me cooking

“Megan,” Blanca begins hopefully. “Are you pregnant yet?”

“Not yet,” I say, half laughing as I’m expecting this question.  Whether or not I’m not pregnant used to be a constant source of discussion among the residents of Tavapy Dos, where babies are revered.

“Good,” she replies, “You are young.  It is harder work not to get pregnant I think.”

Blanca has always been wise.

The neighbors stop by, in a slow trickle at first, then faster as word spreads that the Americans are back.  I show off photos of my new niece and Andrew talks about the Complete Leaf Company. We receive many lunch invitations.  Like most of my time in Paraguay, my first day back is uneventful, but fulfilling.

Dinner that night is lizard, a rural delicacy, served on my former plates.  Our entertainment is the dogs and cats fighting for the bones.  Bedtime comes early, as tomorrow will be a full day in the field, checking on the yerba plants and hiring builders for the factory.  I am the first to crawl into my old mattress with the cotton sheets I had bought two years ago, cleaner than I could ever get them.  I never, never, never thought I would come back, but I’m glad I did.

Megan Wood is a former Peace Corps Volunteer who recently returned to Paraguay where she was stationed. Nowadays she’s helping her husband run The Complete Leaf Company, a fair trade Yerba mate business. For another perspective on returning to Latin America, check out “From College to Crisis and Back: Starting Again in Ecuador.”

I joined the Peace Corps in 2008 and was assigned to work in Paraguay.  I knew the country was located in South America and that it would be my home until 2010.  I did not know that I would drink ground herbs in my water everyday, or that I would meet another volunteer and marry him.  I had no idea I was capable of living in a tree fort or teaching sexual education or learning to swear in the indigenous language of Guaraní.

Yerba mate

But I did all those things, and I did most of them pretty well.  I thought I would take those unique experiences with me and move onto the next chapter in my life, maybe grad school or language classes in Guatemala, but definitely not move back to Paraguay and into the tree fort that was built by hand and made exclusively with love.  Which is exactly what I am now doing.  Only this time, my husband and I are working with a women’s cooperative in our former Paraguayan community to build a tea company.

The future is a funny thing.

The Complete Leaf Company is a brand new take on the traditional South American drink, yerba mate. But Complete Leaf is about more than yerba, it is the belief that we can change the world by heightening our awareness, furthering our experience, increasing our involvement, and exercising our creativity.  The company is truly in its infancy right now, which is why it’s crucial I live in the tree fort and not a walk-up in New York City.  The machinery has to be shipped, workers trained, and the factory built.

Tavapy Dos (meaning “the community that stays” in the native language Guaraní) is a small village near the border of Brazil consisting of one American couple and 500 Paraguayan families in what was once the heart of the Atlantic Rainforest. Although surrounded by mechanized farms, Tavapy Dos retains its heritage as a community of small landholders with a decent percentage of untouched forest, which Complete Leaf is working to protect and regrow.

All challenges of building a company aside, I am going to have to contend with the same obstacles I faced as a Peace Corps volunteer:  language barriers (both Spanish and Guaraní), isolation, biased gender roles, and lack of indoor plumbing.  But shaking off my role as a volunteer will also bring me some well-deserved autonomy:  the freedom to drive a moto, pop over to Brazil for the day, and have a conversation without a little voice in my head reminding me I am a representative of the U.S. government.

The more I think about the future, the more I realize I can’t predict it. Instead, I will simply enjoy living in a tree fort for the present.

This is Megan Wood’s first post on La Vida Idealist.

The best part of my job with Arariwa is that I get to travel around to different pueblos and interview small-scale entrepreneurs. Most of the time it’s fairly monotonous. I ask the same questions and receive the same answers, más o menos. Every so often, I interview socios who really open up and share their inspiring stories with me.

This past Tuesday, I traveled to Calca where I met Milagros and Hector. For the past seven years, they have been running a children’s school in the town named after Thomas Alva Edison. Milagros and Hector work tirelessly to increase the sustainability and value of the school. Like most colegios in Peru the school charges a fee. Some families cannot afford to pay the 190-sol ($66 dollar) monthly price promptly. To combat this frequent lack of funds, Hector and Milagros take out microloans to pay their teachers.

Hector, a science teacher, does not receive a salary. Milagros, who serves as the director as well as a history teacher, earns 1100 soles a month or about $385 dollars. They have recently started an adult education program. These night classes focus on the value of healthy diets, exercise and the need to oversee their children’s homework. When I was there, the room was full with parents. The school also has the largest library in the area with over 300 books.

When I told them that they were doing great things and were an inspiration to me, Hector scoffed. He told me that Edison invented the light bulb and that they have a long way to go to reach that sort of monumental effect. Anyone that is using Edison as a barometer of success clearly has the right intentions.

Visiting Calca reaffirmed the importance of this trip for me. I am encountering people who, with very little resources, are making a profound difference. Milagros and Hector were an inspiration to me and a testament to the significance of microloans.

Jonah Brill is currently volunteering as a Field Researcher with Arariwa in Cusco, Peru.

Cerro Rico

Why do people travel? Personally, I travel to see different landscapes, absorb local culture, photograph natural phenomena, hike beautiful mountains, and eat exotic foreign food. I think many people are in the same boat.

Recently, both here in Brazil, and on vacation in Bolivia, I was introduced to the concept of poverty tourism, and I have really been grappling with the idea. Poverty tourism occurs when individuals deliberately patronize areas of low economic ability motivated by curiosity and the desire for adventure.

Potosí is a city in Bolivia which boasts to be the highest (altitude-wise) in the world. Sitting at approximately 13,420 feet, the only thing towering above the city is the mountain referred to as Cerro Rico. In its heyday, Cerro Rico bestowed great importance on the city by providing wealth from an abundance of silver ores which, by this time, will have been depleted. Once, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, Potosí is now greatly depressed. Aside from offering spectacular Spanish influenced architecture, one of the main tourist attractions in Potosí is to actually visit the mines which are surprisingly still in use.

Although many tourists claim this experience as one of their trip highlights, I chose to sit this one out. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of paying money to a tour operator to visit hoards of impoverished young men working long hours in a dark, damp, dangerous, unhealthy, and a really desperate work environment. The idea never sat right with me.

Similarly, before I left Rio, I had the opportunity to go on a guided tour on the favela Rocinha. I have been to this favela several times, but have never been on a professional tour (probably owing to a similar inner complex concerning poverty tourism). In any event, during the World Urban Forum, I met a very friendly tour guide and he invited me along. So, I gave it a shot.

Our guide was knowledgeable about his neighborhood and even welcomed tourists into his home to show off the view. However, even though he suggested that there was more to favela life than drug trafficking (of course!), this aspect was sadly all we saw. Our guide also mentioned that a certain percent of his proceeds went to fund an art project, but we never even saw it!

I was left wondering if this art project existed, and left with an unshakable and profound distaste of bourgeois insensitivity and ignorance after witnessing countless clashes and knowledge wars between our tour guide and his patrons.

Sex and violence sells. Tourists crave danger and the extraordinary (and maybe even to learn something new). I totally get it. But my problem with poverty tourism is that voyeurism adventure simply serves to exploit the living and working conditions of others. Meanwhile, the money generated by these poverty tours only find its way back into the hands of those running the tourism infrastructure e.g the tour operators, hotels, and restaurants.

What do you think?

Jamie Worms is currently a volunteer for Catalytic Communities in Rio de Janeiro. For more about the ethics of poverty tourism, check out the post “Favela Tourism: Harmful or Helpful?”

Now we’re in another competition, this time with better odds and a bigger reward. But we need your vote! No donation is needed. You just need to be on Facebook.

Facebook has opened many doors by allowing people to connect virtually to share resources and ideas. Recently, organizations have been using Facebook as a tool to reach out to new prospective business partners and clients. In an attempt to do just that, the Chase Foundation launched Chase Community Giving, a contest in which they are going to give away $5 million dollars to local charities. The public is formally invited to decide which charities receive this donation, and the 100 charities that receive the most number of votes will win $ 25,000 each.

Catalytic Communities is urging you and your friends to vote for our charity by December 11, 2009. If we win, we´ll be able use this vital money to train over 200 community leaders from across Rio´s favelas (low income communities) in social media and develop an online hub where their stories will be told.

The city of Rio currently has a list of approximately 19 peaceful and innovative low income communities that are slated for removal. These communities learned about their impending fate from the newspaper. City officials have never even been to these communities to talk with the residents or grant them an opportunity for public comment. Especially because Rio is currently in the global spotlight, it is important to teach and empower local residents to make their voices heard in the lead-up to the 2016 Olympics. The purpose of our project is to make sure the Olympics bring a powerful and proud legacy for all residents of Rio.

To sweeten the deal, anyone who votes in this competition and sends us a screenshot of them doing so will be in the running for a free round-trip ticket to Rio de Janeiro in 2010. This way, you will be able to see our work up close! Send your screenshot to roar@catcomm.org.  (If you’re already in Rio, we will send you somewhere else.)

Thank you for voting and continuing to support our work!

Recycling isn’t nonexistent in Guatemala, but it’s not particularly user-friendly. You have to seek out a recycling center and travel a significant distance to drop off your recyclables. Most people leave recycling to the guajeros, people who live and work inside the fire and landslide-prone city dump, sorting out the salvageable recyclables they can exchange for a few quetzals.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’d become more complacent about throwing away my plastic, aluminum and cardboard in black garbage bags. Nobody else seemed to care, and what can I do if there isn’t time to schlep it across town?

While a community recycling program doesn’t seem to be in Guatemala City’s immediate future, an enterprising new company is attacking the problem of plastic garbage bags head-on. Several months ago, EcoGreen shopping and garbage bags starting popping up at check-out counters all over town. Each bag proudly states on its exterior that it is a corn-based product that will degrade in less than one year. It was surprising to see how quickly shopkeepers adopted the new bags and started touting their store’s environmental awareness.

I’m curious to learn more about the science behind these new bags, whether they’ll really degrade safely and easily in landfills and won’t lead to more deforestation for corn production. But I’m thrilled to see how hungry Guatemala City is to adopt practical green solutions to everyday environmental challenges.

Currently, the North Zone – home to 2 million people – is 3°C warmer than the famously posh South Zone of Rio. This temperature disparity results from a variety of reasons, the foremost being the misappropriation of fires, and the absence of trees. We want to fix these problems. Permanently.

Our basic idea is the following:  we wish to empower residents so they can effectively combat global climate change. We would like to train residents to plant and care for trees in the areas that need them the most. By involving and educating the residents, we hope the benefits of forestation and reforestation will become powerfully apparent.

Naturally, an increase in the tree canopy will result in cleaner water and air. The increase of trees will also provide a cooling effect for the city and will improve the natural habitat for other plants and animals. Residents will also benefit as the increase of trees will raise property values, provide job, educational, and volunteer opportunities, and reduce levels of crime and stress. Not to mention, an increased number of trees will also encourage tourism and prompt commerce.

Along with planting and educating, we will be encouraging the city of Rio to follow through with its plans to plant three million tree saplings in preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games. According to Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc, the Games – with a budget of $14.5 billion – will strive to be a totally green competition. This means that Rio will be able to offset the 716 tons, or roughly two year’s worth, of carbon emissions expected as a result of the Olympic Games.

So, as the athletes begin their low-carb diets, so too, will the city of Rio. Although it may take more than planting trees to completely counteract Rio’s projected carbon emissions, planting three million saplings is a good start. The next logical step is to involve the public to ensure the continued survival of these trees as well as the health and well-being of Rio’s residents and athletes.

Concern for the environment was one of the cornerstones of Rio’s bid for the 2016 Games. Now that we’ve won, we are all in a race of Olympic proportions. We are racing against time to bring Brazil and the world up to speed. We want to catch global climate change, and if we sprint like Olympians, as suggested by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, we all will have the opportunity to overtake our competition, and become champions.

This book is about community organizing by one of, if not the most, famous radicals/idealists of all time. Saul Alinksy began his work in the Chicago stockyards, was a radical icon in the 60’s, and worked towards achieving his ideals until he passed away in 1972. In Rules for Radicals, he lays out the strategies to help those have nothing – the “have nots” – get what they want.

Two of his most famous disciples are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. After reading this book, you will recognize Alinsky’s tactics were used by Obama in his presidential campaign. You may say to yourself : “I don’t consider Hillary and Barack to be radicals.” Don’t let the word “radical” deter you from reading this book. The insights and principles discussed are sensible.

Alinsky emphasized that to be effective, you need to see things how they are, not how they should be:

“Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.”

Some principles that I use in the way I think about volunteer work and the world:

Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark, and make bold moves that will evoke the thought you have more people than you actually have.

Never go outside the experience of those you are trying to help. Think  about how they have lived and what they have seen. Stick to what they know, not what you know. If you are trying to build a connection with a group of people that has no more than a high school education or less, stories from your days in college won’t help your cause.

Look at the current fulfillment of your community needs hierarchy, and act accordingly. If a village lacks an adequate food supply, then any project you develop or help you provide better be directly related to increasing their food supply.

At the very least you are reading a book by someone who lived their life the way they wanted to, on their terms.