FACTORTIERRA

Students of a rural high-school grow their food, produce a podcast.   Written and photographed by David Domínguez for El Tambograndino Noticias   TAMBOGRANDÉ, Peru – The students of Niño Jesus de Praga High-School, El Convento Village, Malingas Alto Community , are developing two educational projects from subjects of Labor education and Communications. The first one is addressed to improve the technical-productive skills for growing organic vegetables . The students, advised by the Labor education teacher, seed cucumbers, coriander, carrots, beetroots, among others. The students plant, irrigate, care the vegetables – the interesting is that the school experience is brought home like harvest purposed to be added into the family   diet . Although those vegetables grow at the countryside, its local consumption trends to be lower in spite of its high nutritional properties.   In the second Project, the students produce a short news bulletin that helps ...

Adding an orchard improves  feeding and learning  of boys and girls in two schools of Piura.  Piura, Peru - Vegetables for breakfast, and school breakfast also. That don't excite around many boys and girls but that ingestion could balance the first meal of the day what is traditionally formed by carbohydrates and some protein. At 20136 School in Bernal ( Sechura ), 17 students have vegetables  as a complement to the breakfast provided by Qali Warma (Strong Child in English) programme, administered by the Peru's Ministry of Social Development and Inclusion (MIDIS as in Spanish). In Piura D epartment, the programme covers 281668 cboys and girls at 4067 public schools. Qali Warma breakfast are usually formed by milky products or oat plus some portion of carbohydrate as bread or egg in the best case.  It is not enough so enriching it can follow depending on government relief, or an extra effort  of parents and school despite. That's why in Bernal...

CHALACO, Peru – Evelio Cobba Mendoza is the only teacher at 15356 School, in Las Mishcas Village, and helped by the educational community, he implemented an orchard with food which, as well as compliments breakfasts and lunchs brought by the  Qali Warma Programme, is inserted into other subjects like Communication, Maths, and Technology & environment. Parents fenced the space with bamboo cane and prepared the land while the school’s children made the grooves and cropped the vegetables. So, the students have learned, for example, there are direct-cropping plants and others those need to be transplanted. The theacher Evelio Cobba comes from La Florida, a district of San Miguel, Cajamarca Region.  His father, evergildo, loved to read. “He learned by himself,” he tells. “I remember he had two bold books of Botanics, and he taught me to crop,”  he points out so happy. “Today, I teach my students to crop and to eat healthy.” Vegetables as carrots, bee...

LAS LOMAS, Peru – It is the time to make lunch for 30 students at the 093 School, and Tío Miguel (Uncle Miguel), as he is lovely named, gets ready to cook tasty spaghetti a-la-huancaína and crispy Pacific chub makerel ( Scomber japonicas peruanus ) croquettes as part of the food services offered by MIDS-Qali Warma. Miguel Ignacio Seminario Pasiche is 50 years old, and 37 years in the kitchen, as he proudly tells. “I learned the cooker job from my father, Segundo, when I was 13 years old, and as my parents had no money to bring me for studying, I bought kitchen booksand I learned to make different dishes so.” Since the beginning of 2019 class, Miguel was proposed by the educational community of El Viviano Centro Village for he to cook breakfast and lunch, and although he has no kids, he feels a lot of affection for the boys and the girls. “I do it for them,” he affirms. At six o’clock in the morning, he starts his journey by making the breakfast for the children to have...

A visit into the most western nascent of Amazon River. Written and photographed by  Ronald Benites , Special to  FACTORTIERRA. EL CARMEN DE LA FRONTERA, Peru - The mountain range will ever fascinate us by many motivations: the solids' majestic, the landscapes, the cool climate, even the culture. Perhaps it is about that fascination of feeling us closer to the sky, at least for us who feel it so. I love the mountain range - I am learning to love it. If all would depend on me, I  took every time I get to  come here, breathe  pure air, enjoy around. I already declared I am an activist of of this kind of spaces, so the coherent will be ever coming  here as much as I can, like right now. I am in a car  going up from Huancabamba City because my today's task is reaching the Shimbe [pronounce "Shimbeh"]Lake, origin of Huancabamba River , and if  we look at the map, the most occidental nascent of Amazon River . Shimbé or White Lake (Laguna ...

CANCHAQUÉ, Peru – Nicolás Rodríguez Julca dreams to be an agricultural engineer. He’s just 9 years old, studies in 5th grade Elementary at 14498 San Francisco School, and he’s the Environmental Chief. Adding the care of the place where he lives, one of his tasks is to promote healthy food habits among his classmates.   Currently, the school has stimulated the families to own orchards at their houses, so having more variety in food they consume.   Precisely, Nicolas’ job consists to visit these houses every week, to register the orchards status in a file: if the soil is already prepared, if it’s already planted, irrigated, removed the bad weed, or if it’s the harvest time. Based upon these results, Nicolás can give some recommendations.   Nicolás’ teacher Haydeé Choque sulco supervises the work, opines the boy is a leader along, as well as the orchard improves the social-environmental skills of the students. The vegetables cropped at the school and the hom...

Photographs  Courtesy of Pan-Soy PIURA CITY, Peru -- The 26 mycro-companies promoted by Pan-soy in Piura ended 2016 successfully having granted around 310,000 rations so becoming true the daily commitment of sharin their gains and promoting healthy habits among vulnerable people in their communities. Along December , receiver institutions of those rations were the stage for significant celebrations motivated to conmemorate the work of the mycro-businesspersons during the whole year strengthening to feed children, teenagers and elders in risk of malnutrition. A Christmas special ration was delivered bringing the Pan-Soy message to each one of the grantees' homes. Since 2013, Pan-soy intervened in Piura Region counting more than 30 inter-institutional cooperation agreements with public and private corporations, it also gave the chance to associations postulating to work funding for entrepreneuring , by training more than 120 entrepreneurs in 19 districtsand reaching the ...