February 13-22, 2010

Opportunities for Communities, Inc. (OfC) spent ten days in Guatemala collaborating with and learning from AbonOrganiCo (AOC).  OfC course leaders took 8 high school students to Guatemala City from February 13-22, 2010.

AbonOrganiCo is a composting project at the Central Market (Central de Mayoreo, or CENMA) in Guatemala City.  AbonOrganiCo began operation in January 2010 with a modest grant and some very enthusiastic, dedicated and determined young men.  The city is letting AOC use land on the edge of the market.  So far they've bought a wood chipper and hired five workers - local kids living in the city dump who would otherwise have little hope of employment or education.  AbonOrganiCo requires these kids to belong to a church - any church, and to stay in school. 

The OfC group learned about all aspects of AOC’s operation, jumping right in shoveling gooey vegetables from Cenma and sorting them at AOC headquarters.  They poured a concrete floor in a home in Zone 3 where life revolves around the basurero - Central America’s largest dump.  The neighborhood is built on an old dump, and bits of rubbish continue to rise through the thin soil covering it.  A house with a dirt floor needs to continually keep up with the bottles and plastic bags that rise to the surface.  The concrete floor provides a barrier that could be kept clean.  Families in this neighborhood are trapped in hopeless poverty subsisting on the city’s rubbish in search of items that might be sold to recyclers and street vendors.

OfC students also learned some Spanish, and about local culture; they spent time with the AbonOrganiCo employees, basurero inhabitants, and many other Guatemalans.  They studied composting methods and AOC’s plans for gaining greater acceptance of renewable sustainable resource use in Guatemala City.