The minga is an integral part of life in the Andes. It’s a form of collective work where community members work together to fulfill a common cause that benefits the community itself. However, it isn’t just work. It’s a moment to congregate, catch up, laugh, tell stories, and solidify the bonds within the community as well.
Join Abya Viva for a very special Cultural Road Trip this month where you will get to participate, firsthand, in a community minga to help reforest a damaged area of the highly biodiverse Andean paramo (highlands) with native plants and trees. You will work side-by-side with community members who take care of and conserve the largest privately owned nature preserve in Ecuador, Marcos Perez de Castilla in Oña, Azuay!
You will also enjoy a deliciously prepared meal with ingredients from the community members’ gardens and farms. You will have a number of chances to speak with and get to know the people of Marcos Perez and learn from them about the age-old practice of the minga, get a tour of their community center, and talk about the work they have been doing to conserve and reforest their land.
Saturday, May 21
7:30 AM – evening
$60*
Reservations at: res@idiomartcuenca.com
*everything is included (transportation, meals, guides, tools and plants for reforestation etc.)
– – we will meet at idiomART and be dropped off there afterwards – –
The Marcos Pérez de Castilla commune, legally constituted since 1992, has historically been organized for the protection of 11,000 hectares of páramo (Andean highlands), native forest, shrubby vegetation, and bodies of water, a territory that in 2019 was declared a community-protected area within the National System of Protected Areas (SNAP) by the Ministry of the Environment of Ecuador.
This event is part of the Abyaviva: One Blood, One Voice initiative. It will be in Spanish but with the option of translation if needed.
Abyaviva is an alliance of Co-op Centerline and The Waterbearers organization in Ecuador. It is an intercultural information platform that offers face-to-face and virtual conversations and live classrooms with communities committed to environmental governance for responsible management of ecosystems and the transmission of ancestral knowledge that guides human behavior for community growth.
What will you be planting? Various native plant and tree species to help create a natural, native forest. Some of the plants and trees are wax laurel, cedar, podocarpus, chachaco, and quinoa.
Mariscal Lamar 14-25 y Estevez de Toral; Cuenca, Ecuador
Sarah HB
