KTC CELEBRATES ITS 20th ANNIVERSARY ON THE FARM IN TENNESSEE
SUMMER 2006
REPRESENTATIVES OF FOUR CAFSI PROGRAMS MEET IN MANAGUA
KTC Talent Show Finale!
(photo by Anita Whipple)
Kids To The Country is Plenty’s oldest project in Tennessee and one that has helped to connect more than 2500 kids, most from inner-city Nashville neighborhoods, but also from other Tennessee cities like Memphis. During the first week of this year’s summer sessions, thanks to a generous donation from Dr. Dave Winek of the Williamson Medical Center of Franklin, Tennessee and his wife Janet, four young people from hurricane Katrina-ravaged Biloxi, Mississippi participated along with ten others from Nashville. Missy, Cassie, Frederickous and Jerry were in Biloxi throughout the hurricane and hadn’t left the city since. Studies and our own first-hand observations have shown that the emotional impact of the hurricane on the survivors has been intense and long-lasting, and especially on the very young.
(photo by Casta Calderon)
Top, from left, Maria and Guillermo Alvarado and their baby. Guillermo is ADIBE’s (Guatemala) manager. To Guillermo’s left is Ana Louisa, Production Manager at Soynica’s Casa Nutrem, followed by Imelda Cruz de la Rosa of the Huichol Center in Mexico, Chuck Haren of Plenty, Agustin Xoquic from ADIBE, Felipa Barrios from UPAVIM (Guatemala City), and Estreberta Carrillo Santillo of the Huichol Center. Kneel- ing from left, is Maria Elena Xoquic of ADIBE, Blanca Olivia Cermeno of UPAVIM and Heidi Yolana Castillo of UPAVIM.
In June, the long-planned “Encuentro” involving all four of the Central American Food Security Initiative programs was hosted by Soynica in Managua, Nicaragua. This historic week-long gathering brought together Mayans and Huichols, urban and rural food processors, marketers and nutritionists to teach and learn from each other, compare notes about problems faced and overcome, differing methods of production, successes and failures and hopes for the future.
Mornings often begin after breakfast with a long bike ride.
(photo by Anita Whipple)
See KTC, p. 2
PLENTY International is a nongovernmental relief and development organization.
Donations to PLENTY are tax-deductible.
• PLENTY, P.O. Box 394, Summertown, TN 38483 •
Phone: 931-964-4323 Email:
Around the conference table.
See CAFSI p. 3
KTC (cont. from p. 1)
Guided by staff and trainees at the Farm’s Ecovillage Training Center, kids built model villages out of a mud and straw “cob” proving that although it may take a village to raise a child, sometimes a child can raise a village!
Horseback riding.
Kids To The Country Talent Show
The “Swimming Hole.”
KTC’s mission is to create a multicultural exchange for at-risk urban children, to build a positive self-image in each child and help the youngsters develop a connection to the land and rhythms of nature through direct experience.
Meanwhile, back in the city KTC Urban, under the direction of William Sizwe Herring, is continuing to sponsor activities for kids (gardening, composting, recycling games, music and more) on weekends at George Washington Carver Park, located at 10th and Gale in West Nashville. KTC Urban is committed to helping people, especially children, establish vegetable gardens at schools, homes, in empty lots and other appropriate locations.
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(photo by Marie Douglas)
(photo by Anita Whipple)
(Talent Show photos by Anita Whipple)
CAFSI (cont. from p.1)
Mayans and Huichol CAFSI members attending the Managua workshops are dedicated to improving the nutrition and livelihood of their rural communities.
They toured Soynica’s Casa Nutrem advanced production and packaging facility. They attended lectures on nutrition and sanitation. They ate together, danced together, and toured various sites around Nicaragua in a bus rented by Soynica for the occasion. When the Huichol Center women were headed back home by way of Guatemala City, they got to tour the UPAVIM facility and soyfoods pro- duction plant and go up to Solola to visit the Mayan “Soyaria” of ADIBE. This was the first time either of the women had been to Guatemala or Nicaragua, or had flown in an airplane.
OTHER GUATEMALA PROJECTS
Supported by a grant from former Plenty Guatemala volunteer, Jeremy Sherman, the four students above with their mothers and Guillermo Alavarado representing ADIBE, and 16 other students, are receiving scholarships to pay for their school tuitions.
Casta Calderon of Plenty talks about principles and methods of providing good nutrition.
A workshop about packaging and marketing dried vegetable products was led by Casa Nutrem staff.
A soy processing demonstration in the village of San Bartolo was part of the “Village Model Food and Nutrition Program.”
(All photos on this page by Chuck Haren.)
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GULF COAST HURRICANE RELIEF
After driving the Biloxi “Kids To The Country” back home, Plenty volunteers Marie Douglas (left) and Elaine Langley, picked up a load of bananas to distribute in their Biloxi neighborhood. They also bought food for Pass Christian, MS.
Long-time Plenty donor Mike Wells, (left) donated his Ford Tioga Arrow motorhome to Plenty for the use of our hurricane relief volunteers in the Gulf. Plenty volunteer and building contractor, Tony Sferlazza who had been helping with building projects at Pine Ridge, drove the motorhome to Louisiana where he has been working in and around the Bayou Indian community of Chauvin. Thanks Mike and thanks Irene Romero and the Gary Rhine (Rhino) Katrina Rebuilding Fund for supporting this work.
Donations to support Plenty’s hurricane relief work in the Gulf have come from a wide variety of compassionate citizens and organizations, but some of the most gratifying have been the donations raised and contributed by school children. Most recently we’ve received donations raised by students at the Peninsula School of Menlo Park, CA and The Wilson School in Mountain Lakes, NJ where the students held a bake sale, and the Children’s Liberation Day Care Center in New York City.
Kathryn Hutchens 1949-2006
Kathryn Hutchens, Plenty Board Member and volunteer, teacher, singer/songwriter, peace activist, angel. Kathryn was a “people person” who got along with everyone, but she had a special way with kids who seemed to just love being around her. Note the smiles in the above photo shot in the Mayan village of Santa Elena, Belize.
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Kathryn’s work with Plenty was but one aspect of her charitable commitments. For years she worked locally in Lawrenceburg, TN with the Hunger Coalition. Her special expertise was peer lending as a means for women to lift themselves out of poverty. In the photo above Kathryn is talking to a Mayan women’s group in Belize about ways they might employ peer lending in their villages. Plenty has set up the “Kathryn Hutchens Memorial Fund” which is accepting donations to benefit women and children.
PLENTY BELIZE
The GATE (School Gardens) Program is now a holistic program focusing on many aspects of healthy development, including: Food Security; Nutrition; Health; Environment; Education; and Poverty Alleviation. 21 of the 50 primary schools in the Toledo District are now active in the Program. Recent surveys of poverty levels in the country of Belize report a poverty rate of 79% in the Toledo District which ranks it at the bottom of the Western Hemisphere with countries like Haiti.
(photo by Eleanor Jones)
(photo by Chante Pierce.)