Happy 2011!
Happy New Year from Proyecto Itzaes! This past year has been full of achievements with our long term programs as well as several new and very innovative projects.
A few highlights that illustrate what your donations have supported:
- Books that have been read thousands of times ( literally!) by eager young readers in our villages and their extended families. Literacy levels in our villages are at an all time high.
- Our current book drive to provide new titles and replacement books for our village libraries.
- Tutoring and after school learning for all ages.
- Enrichment classes that include dance, art, handcrafts, and sports.
- A super successful health initiative to improve nutrition and to combat type ll diabetes along with a video produced by PI kids and Stanford alum, Tom McFadden.
- Permaculture and bio‐intensive gardening classes (funded by the Rotary Foundation and the Los Altos Rotary club with the assistance of Club Rotario Nuevas Generaciones Merida). Families have expanded their crops and increased yield and are producing organic foods for their families as well as to sell.
- A farmers market project (just starting) funded by theRotary Foundation and the Palo Alto Rotary club with the assistance of Club Rotario Nuevas Generaciones Merida.
- A community based reforestation program in Ixil that includes oral histories of common garden and wild foods historically used by Yucatecos. This effort led by Stanford student and PI board member, Erica Fernandez will produce next summer a book of local plant knowledge that will be written in Maya, Spanish, English and will include the scientific names of the most common plants.
And much more! Mil gracias, dios bo’otik and thank you all for your support!
A few photos because their faces say it all!
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