More Chickens

With only a day to visit, we couldn’t afford to have the steam and gas from the volcano keep us from visiting Our Savior’s Lutheran Church chicken project. Our Savior’s and the German Churches are supplying chicken units for the women’s cooperative. With our donation, our project partner provides the family with a coop design and the materials to construct a coop. The family does the work. We were greeted by seven families representing the 25 women of the cooperative, finding that four of the seven have their chicken coops and for one, the chicks were being delivered today. A smaller group of families provided us a rare opportunity to talk to learn more about their community. A visual of these women indicated they were dressed better than our first visit and looked healthier. That is in part to better nutrition and income generation from our projects and ANDA (government water provider) now has drinking water to the community. The community has approximately 300 families and all the children attend school. Classes are offered through the ninth grade. This is a big change from our last visit so we asked another question - is electricity available to the entire community? Yes, electricity is available to all but not all families can afford it or think it’s really necessary. A family receiving these chicken units will repay the community by donating five hens to start another chicken unit. We visited three of the sites before leaving and heading to the agriculture projects else-where on the volcano.

At the end of the visit, two more women shared that they are eagerly waiting for a chicken unit. We are very anxious to finish this project. David y Nancy