Ecuador Newsletter - October 2017
Welcome to our new home!
Welcome to our third newsletter to be written in Ecuador and the first to be written in our new home in San Pablo de Chila, a small village just outside Santo Domingo. We've sorry it's been so long since we last spoke but we promise we have been very busy, working hard on the house and the project. We may also have had a bit of a holiday as well but more on that to come...
When we last spoke we were living with Katie in her flat in Santo Domingo. Well we are happy to announce (although I'm sure you've worked it out already by reading the email subject and title) that we've finally moved out and into our own little house. It took a little while longer than we thought but we are finally here. We just want to say a massive thank you to Katie who put up with us for 4 months after we initially said we would be staying for "3 weeks, one month maximum"!
The last couple of months has been spent getting the house ready; finishing the decorating, buying all the white goods and furniture, insect-proofing all the windows and ceiling and generally making the place habitable. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the internet installed. We went to 5 different internet providers in Santo Domingo but none of them have internet that reaches out the the little village where we are living. Finally after a few frustrated days looking we found the company and got it installed the very next day.
It has been a very interesting experience setting up a new home in a foreign country and it has definitely brought around its frustrations and clashes of culture. It has however presented great opportunities for us to use our Spanish (Lydia's still way better than me) and to get to know the city of Santo Domingo even better. We've also had a lot of help from kind friends and it has certainly been a positive experience overall although one we wouldn't look to repeat too soon!
Welcome to our third newsletter to be written in Ecuador and the first to be written in our new home in San Pablo de Chila, a small village just outside Santo Domingo. We've sorry it's been so long since we last spoke but we promise we have been very busy, working hard on the house and the project. We may also have had a bit of a holiday as well but more on that to come...
When we last spoke we were living with Katie in her flat in Santo Domingo. Well we are happy to announce (although I'm sure you've worked it out already by reading the email subject and title) that we've finally moved out and into our own little house. It took a little while longer than we thought but we are finally here. We just want to say a massive thank you to Katie who put up with us for 4 months after we initially said we would be staying for "3 weeks, one month maximum"!
The last couple of months has been spent getting the house ready; finishing the decorating, buying all the white goods and furniture, insect-proofing all the windows and ceiling and generally making the place habitable. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the internet installed. We went to 5 different internet providers in Santo Domingo but none of them have internet that reaches out the the little village where we are living. Finally after a few frustrated days looking we found the company and got it installed the very next day.
It has been a very interesting experience setting up a new home in a foreign country and it has definitely brought around its frustrations and clashes of culture. It has however presented great opportunities for us to use our Spanish (Lydia's still way better than me) and to get to know the city of Santo Domingo even better. We've also had a lot of help from kind friends and it has certainly been a positive experience overall although one we wouldn't look to repeat too soon!
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We have also installed our workshop from which we will be running the project. It is conveniently located next door giving us a morning commute of roughly 5 meters! We have a large area covered by a metal roof (vital once the serious rain starts in a couple of months) and under that roof a closed off area in which we can store equipment and lock it away. We also have 2 outside toilets which are perfect for the project, it feels that this place was specially prepared just for us.
The space here is the main reason we are basing the project out at San Pablo, we share it with the church who run a bible school in the covered area on Saturday afternoon for the local children of San Pablo. The village is a small community of only a few hundred people, everybody knows everyone and stoping to chat for half an hour is very common. This is something we've had to adjust to, it's more common in London for people to time leaving the flat to avoid the neighbours! Welcome to Ecuador.....!
The space here is the main reason we are basing the project out at San Pablo, we share it with the church who run a bible school in the covered area on Saturday afternoon for the local children of San Pablo. The village is a small community of only a few hundred people, everybody knows everyone and stoping to chat for half an hour is very common. This is something we've had to adjust to, it's more common in London for people to time leaving the flat to avoid the neighbours! Welcome to Ecuador.....!
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As for the project itself, that now looks a little different from what we first imagined. The initial plan had been to start a business employing people directly to make the products, this is the model Craft Aid has used in Tanzania and Peru. Employment law in Ecuador however is a bit more tricky and it was looking to be very complicated to employ people on a contractual basis.
When Susie was out with us in July we had meetings with our partner foundation and decided to change the project to being a training and facilitating centre. The basic premise is that a participant will attend a training course in our workshop for 4-6 months. On the course we will teach them all the skills to make paper and all our paper products as well as some jewellery skills. We will have 5 trainees at a time on the course, ideally with a mixture of abilities.
Once they have completed the course we will assist them to register as self employed and provide them the with initial equipment to work from home. We will commission a certain number of our products from them every month which we will buy if the quality is met. This gives them a predictable and constant income but they will also be free to produce items to sell themselves and work with other people.
Thank you to all who have donated, it really will make a massive difference and we couldn't do this project without you. If you haven't yet donated and want to, please use the button at the bottom of this email marked 'donate here'. Thank You.
This new project proposal helps us in a number of ways, we don't have to have complicated and expensive contracts and it gives the participants more freedom and choices, they are not just tied to us to earn money. We plan to sell the products here in Ecuador, mainly in the tourist centres of Quito, Cuenca and the Galapagos Islands. We also still plan to sell them in the U.K so keep an eye on our Facebook page to find out where you can get them.
Lydia has been busy continuing to design new products and ideas that we will teach the participants to produce. We have also been working on application forms and letters in Spanish and we will start to look for suitable participants very soon. We aim to begin the project proper in the second week of November and for the training to last 4-6 months depending on the speed of learning.
We are really excited to be finally getting going with the reason we are out here but we know going through those steps of change has taught us a lot and brought us on the right path. As one of our friends told us "if you come out to Ecuador with an unmovable plan set in stone which you won't adapt and adjust as needed, you're going to be leaving very quickly". Who knows, the next time we speak the plan could have changed totally again, that's life (especially in a different culture) in a nutshell.
When Susie was out with us in July we had meetings with our partner foundation and decided to change the project to being a training and facilitating centre. The basic premise is that a participant will attend a training course in our workshop for 4-6 months. On the course we will teach them all the skills to make paper and all our paper products as well as some jewellery skills. We will have 5 trainees at a time on the course, ideally with a mixture of abilities.
Once they have completed the course we will assist them to register as self employed and provide them the with initial equipment to work from home. We will commission a certain number of our products from them every month which we will buy if the quality is met. This gives them a predictable and constant income but they will also be free to produce items to sell themselves and work with other people.
Thank you to all who have donated, it really will make a massive difference and we couldn't do this project without you. If you haven't yet donated and want to, please use the button at the bottom of this email marked 'donate here'. Thank You.
This new project proposal helps us in a number of ways, we don't have to have complicated and expensive contracts and it gives the participants more freedom and choices, they are not just tied to us to earn money. We plan to sell the products here in Ecuador, mainly in the tourist centres of Quito, Cuenca and the Galapagos Islands. We also still plan to sell them in the U.K so keep an eye on our Facebook page to find out where you can get them.
Lydia has been busy continuing to design new products and ideas that we will teach the participants to produce. We have also been working on application forms and letters in Spanish and we will start to look for suitable participants very soon. We aim to begin the project proper in the second week of November and for the training to last 4-6 months depending on the speed of learning.
We are really excited to be finally getting going with the reason we are out here but we know going through those steps of change has taught us a lot and brought us on the right path. As one of our friends told us "if you come out to Ecuador with an unmovable plan set in stone which you won't adapt and adjust as needed, you're going to be leaving very quickly". Who knows, the next time we speak the plan could have changed totally again, that's life (especially in a different culture) in a nutshell.
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Nuestra CasaWelcome to our new home!
Hi Admin and welcome to our third newsletter to be written in Ecuador and the first to be written in our new home in San Pablo de Chila, a small village just outside Santo Domingo. We've sorry it's been so long since we last spoke but we promise we have been very busy, working hard on the house and the project. We may also have had a bit of a holiday as well but more on that to come...
When we last spoke we were living with Katie in her flat in Santo Domingo. Well we are happy to announce (although I'm sure you've worked it out already by reading the email subject and title) that we've finally moved out and into our own little house. It took a little while longer than we thought but we are finally here. We just want to say a massive thank you to Katie who put up with us for 4 months after we initially said we would be staying for "3 weeks, one month maximum"!
The last couple of months has been spent getting the house ready; finishing the decorating, buying all the white goods and furniture, insect-proofing all the windows and ceiling and generally making the place habitable. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the internet installed. We went to 5 different internet providers in Santo Domingo but none of them have internet that reaches out the the little village where we are living. Finally after a few frustrated days looking we found the company and got it installed the very next day.
It has been a very interesting experience setting up a new home in a foreign country and it has definitely brought around its frustrations and clashes of culture. It has however presented great opportunities for us to use our Spanish (Lydia's still way better than me) and to get to know the city of Santo Domingo even better. We've also had a lot of help from kind friends and it has certainly been a positive experience overall although one we wouldn't look to repeat too soon!
We have also installed our workshop from which we will be running the project. It is conveniently located next door giving us a morning commute of roughly 5 meters! We have a large area covered by a metal roof (vital once the serious rain starts in a couple of months) and under that roof a closed off area in which we can store equipment and lock it away. We also have 2 outside toilets which are perfect for the project, it feels that this place was specially prepared just for us.
The space here is the main reason we are basing the project out at San Pablo, we share it with the church who run a bible school in the covered area on Saturday afternoon for the local children of San Pablo. The village is a small community of only a few hundred people, everybody knows everyone and stoping to chat for half an hour is very common. This is something we've had to adjust to, it's more common in London for people to time leaving the flat to avoid the neighbours!
We are lucky to have lots of different fruit trees on the land. As well as papaya we have oranges, lemons, maracuyá (passion fruit) and chillies.
As for the project itself, that now looks a little different from what we first imagined. The initial plan had been to start a business employing people directly to make the products, this is the model Craft Aid has used in Tanzania and Peru. Employment law in Ecuador however is a bit more tricky and it was looking to be very complicated to employ people on a contractual basis.
When Susie was out with us in July we had meetings with our partner foundation and decided to change the project to being a training and facilitating centre. The basic premise is that a participant will attend a training course in our workshop for 4-6 months. On the course we will teach them all the skills to make paper and all our paper products as well as some jewellery skills. We will have 5 trainees at a time on the course, ideally with a mixture of abilities.
Once they have completed the course we will assist them to register as self employed and provide them the with initial equipment to work from home. We will commission a certain number of our products from them every month which we will buy if the quality is met. This gives them a predictable and constant income but they will also be free to produce items to sell themselves and work with other people.
Thank you to all who have donated, it really will make a massive difference and we couldn't do this project without you. If you haven't yet donated and want to, please use the button at the bottom of this email marked 'donate here'. Thank You.
This new project proposal helps us in a number of ways, we don't have to have complicated and expensive contracts and it gives the participants more freedom and choices, they are not just tied to us to earn money. We plan to sell the products here in Ecuador, mainly in the tourist centres of Quito, Cuenca and the Galapagos Islands. We also still plan to sell them in the U.K so keep an eye on our Facebook page to find out where you can get them.
Lydia has been busy continuing to design new products and ideas that we will teach the participants to produce. We have also been working on application forms and letters in Spanish and we will start to look for suitable participants very soon. We aim to begin the project proper in the second week of November and for the training to last 4-6 months depending on the speed of learning.
We are really excited to be finally getting going with the reason we are out here but we know going through those steps of change has taught us a lot and brought us on the right path. As one of our friends told us "if you come out to Ecuador with an unmovable plan set in stone which you won't adapt and adjust as needed, you're going to be leaving very quickly". Who knows, the next time we speak the plan could have changed totally again, that's life (especially in a different culture) in a nutshell.
We have been really lucky that during these past few months we have been able visit even more of this beautiful country of Ecuador. We went to Baños with our friends Emily and Cassidy, a great place in the mountains where you can bungee jump, do white water rafting, and visit a massive waterfall amongst many things.
We also visited Shell which is a village right on the edge of the rainforest. It was set up by the eponymous oil company when they were prospecting in the jungle and was subsequently used as a base by American missionaries venturing into the jungle as it has an airstrip enabling them to fly in supplies. We learnt about different indigenous tribes who still live in the forests in "chosen isolation" and how they interact with "modern" Ecuadorian society.
As I write this email we have just returned from 2 weeks of travelling with Lydia's parents. First we showed them around Quito, then went on to Mindo on the way to Santo Domingo. The big treat however was 8 days on the Galápagos Islands, an experience that we will never ever forget and truly one of the most special places we've ever been. The proximity to the wildlife is awe-inspiring and to see such a (relatively) young eco-system and the complexities of nature so clearly in front of your eyes is incredible. We know we are truly blessed to be living in a country with such beautiful nature and wonderful people.
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So there you are, a very brief look at our past 3 months and which has hopefully brought you up to speed with all that's been going on here in Ecuador. The next letter will certainly be sent a lot sooner now we have the internet! The next time you hear from us we hope to have started the first round of training, be settled into our new home and Newcastle will be top of the premier league....I guess 2 out of 3 won't be bad?!
Don't forget to check out the Facebook page, Instagram and website to keep up with things going on here...just use the links at the bottom of this email to get connected!
God Bless
Mark and Lydia
Don't forget to check out the Facebook page, Instagram and website to keep up with things going on here...just use the links at the bottom of this email to get connected!
God Bless
Mark and Lydia
