Your donations sprout into action this spring

Organic gardening training continues at the Himalayan Institute Mexico’s facility. Arizsandy, our agronomist, prepared a special class for the counselors to reinforce home gardening techniques and the proper use of tools.

La formación de la jardineria organica continúa en la facilidad Mexicana del Instituto Himalaya. Arizsandy, nuestro ingeniero agronomo preparo una clase especial que se reforzó las ténicas de la jardeneria y tambien el uso de las herramientas.

Planting a garden to supplement meals with higher nutrition begins with the harvest in mind – our trainers created a visual plan to share with the families that shows them the vegetables and then allocates the necessary garden space.

Una gran parte de la planificación de jardin con nutrición mas alto comienza con la cosecha en cuenta. Nuestros instructores crean un plan visual de las verduras querian nuesario espacio ajardinado.

Next, they bring this plan to the individual VIDA families so they can start their gardens for the season!

Siguiente que traean este plan a las familias de VIDA para que puedan iniciar sus propias jardines.

For rural Mexicans, a home garden offsets diet-related disease and poverty.
Your $50 donation sponsors a family in the VIDA Project for a year.

100% of all contributions goes towards the VIDA Project.

World Water Day

Today is World Water Day, a day when we acknowledge the importance of life’s most basic yet most valuable necessity – clean water! It is a great time to take stock of our own water usage patterns and create more efficient habits around using water. Our friends at Water Use It Wisely share some great conservation tips!

The Himalayan Institute’s Humanitarian Projects in Africa, Mexico and India, dig wells, build spring-feed catchments and install other water harvesting systems to supply water to the communities in which we work.

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” – Jacques Cousteau

Water Changes Everything

Inspecting a newly completed catchment in Cameroon

“Water management is often a challenge for our projects because of the harsh climatic conditions and poor infrastructure in our service areas.
It takes endurance and holistic solutions to deliver water to these communities, but once you successfully provide clean water… peoples lives truly change on every level!”

Jeff Abella, Humanitarian Projects Manager for the Himalayan Institute.

Water Project Spotlight

Today we’d like to highlight the rain water harvesting system that our team installed in Mexico to support the VIDA Project. It is located at our agricultural training center and makes use of the rain water which falls 9 months our of the year.

Click on the first image to begin the slide show. 

The roof of our training pavilion has special water collecting channels installed.

The water is channeled to a nearby water storage tank

Thin mesh screens are installed to protect against debris from entering the water tank.

From the tank, the water is piped to 6 different water taps located throughout our training campus.

Utilizing locally grown bamboo to build our water taps.

Inspecting the new “eco” water taps.

Our project leaders testing the new system.

In the dry season it crucial to have a controlled water source.

LETS DIG!

If you and your friends would like to sponsor a water project, let us know and we’ll get to work for you. The Himalayan Institute is a perfect implementation partner. Email us at humanitarian@himalayaninstitute.org to get started.

Leadership Training for VIDA Managers

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy

In January, our corporate sponsor, Sustainable Earth Solutions (SES), delivered a custom-training program to the VIDA and Fondo Para Ninos project managers in Mexico. The dynamic team, Dave Bauer, Bob Adler and Kyla Jaquish, presented a workshop with interactive lessons in creative thinking, team building, project design and management, change leadership and ways to enhance team communication. Their kinesthetic exercises built trust, team dynamics, and mindfulness, creating significant break-through moments for each of the participants, enabling them to move to new and deeper levels of self-awareness and team performance.

The SES team reports, “One area that was so refreshing to experience was how focused, enthusiastic and appreciative the participants were. As the week-long training went on, the depth of the connection between the participants and the training team became very unique… relationships flourished.”

Each day began with a centering activity designed to foster mindfulness and led into a specific leadership theme; each theme involved corresponding activities that invited the participants to develop competency in these leadership areas. The group developed their own goals to further their work in the VIDA community, for example, to assist mothers in the nutrition program, to work with parents to expand their understanding of the long-term benefits of the VIDA program, to reach out to the young adults (13-24 year-olds) in the community and to further the families’ commitment to their own organic home gardens.
We look forward to reporting on the outcome of these initiatives!

Kyla’s Reflections

“I had an amazing experience in Huehuetla, Mexico delivering the Creative Problem Solving workshop.” The workshop took place in a university classroom located in the transition zone between the Sierra de Puebla and the Sierra de Papantla. Based on previous work in a corporate setting, she anticipated that the locals of the indigenous community would treat the SES team as outsiders, as if they were making them do this work. Instead, Kyla noted, the group participants were accepting and extremely willing to learn what the SES team had to say. “The level of respect and curiosity was amazing.”

 Your donations to our Humanitarian Projects makes a difference in the world!  Our work establishes sustainable self-transformation programs, like VIDA Project in Mexico. We need your help to reach 500 families.
Donations are tax deductible.

Eco-Friendly Humanitarian Efforts in Kumbo

Cameroon’s First Solar Panels 

At the Himalayan Institute Cameroon, power outages are so frequent that a back-up generator is necessary to keep the lights and computers on in the library & health center and the equipment running in the vocational school. To keep the generator battery charged, a staff member must run the generator 15 minutes each week. This wastes fuel, costs money (fuel is quite expensive) and creates air pollution (the generator makes smoke when it is being used to charge the batteries as it is not run to full capacity).  If staff forgets to run the generator, the batteries run down and became too weak to start the generator when it is needed most.

Project Requirements:
1. Weather proof solar panel installation
2. Simple and maintenance free operation
3. Trained staff to maintain and trouble-shoot the finished setup

Project Solution:
1. Install two 5-watt solar panels on the roof of the building that houses the generator
2. Connect charge controllers between the solar panels and batteries to prevent the batteries from becoming over charged

Green Results:
The sun, a renewable resource, shines on the solar panels during the day which converts the sunlight into electricity which then flows through wires to a device called the Charge Controller. (This device acts like a water faucet for electricity.)  When the charge in the batteries gets low, the Controller allows the electricity from the solar panels to flow into the batteries.  When the batteries are full, the Charge Controller turns the current flow off to prevent the batteries from being overcharged. This device allows the whole setup to run automatically and mostly unattended. It has the capacity to alert staff if there is something wrong with the solar setup via blinking lights!

Your donations and outreach activities help us to help families in rural areas of Cameroon and Mexico to make a better life for themselves. 

A $50 contribution sponsors one family for a year in the VIDA Project in Mexico.

(All donations are tax deductible.)

VIDA Notes

Agriculture  & Aztec Heritage

Our VIDA project introduces modern, sustainable farming practices in the Totonac region of Central Mexico where the most common crop historically grown by the peoples of Central Mexico (and the most important), was maize, also known as corn or mealies. Archaeologists believe that wild maize was domesticated first in Mexico about 6,000 yrs ago and spread to the rest of the world from there. Maize was the staple grain of the Aztec empire and critical for their survival. When there were floods or droughts that affected the maize crop it was a disaster.

The Aztecs needed to keep their world in order and in balance to try to avoid such disasters. They did practical things such as terracing their fields to provide more usable land and to preserve water, bringing in fresh water from afar with aqueducts. People also often created their own gardens to grow fruits and vegetables for their families, much like the VIDA gardens which make fresh produce available to the family, put more nutrition in family meals and, by growing the program from the family kitchen outwards to the market, ensures that the Totonacos continue to benefit from their harvest and labor.

Your donations to VIDA help us to help families in rural Mexico. 

A $50 contribution sponsors one family for a year in the VIDA Project.

(All donations are tax deductible.)