Earth Education Project: Pachamama Paper on Sale for Christmas

The Pachamama Workshop, lead by Nicaraguan artsit Lesbia Perez Borge, part of the Earth Education Project, working together with the local Nicaraguan NGO ‘Juntos Contigo’ targets the families that live and work on the municipal trash dump outside the Nicaraguan capital Managua. The Pachamama workshop, in a series of courses over the year 2010, teaches youth and adults how to produce new products from recyclable materials. The project's overall aim is to establish within a year a profitable business that will in future provide the community with alternative incomes based on newly learned skills.

We began with a pilot program in November 2009 (detailed previously on the blog).
The workshop doubled in attendence after the 1st week through participants telling family and friends that they were learning to recycle paper that they would normally painstakingly collect from the dump to sell for a pitiful price.
With the Earth Eductaion Project's workshops, exculsively for adults and youth over the age of 15, participants are making paper from scratch. In the run up to Christams the paper made was turned into beautiful, original Christmas cards. Juntos Contigo representatives sold the cards at venues in Managua to raise funds for the workshop. Sufficent funds were raised to purchase a new paper blender!

In 2010 we will be offering paper and products to order online.
The paper will be sold in Nicaragua and in Europe.

What We Do

The Earth Education Project is based in Nicaragua, in the La Chureca community- the capital's municipal trash dump. Working with families who depend on municipal trash for their income, the Earth Education Project offers a practical recycling and environmental course for students of all ages. Classes, based in the Juntos Contigo centre, cover topics from renewable energy resources to self-sufficent gardening. The Pachamama Workshop for women, shows in a series of courses, how to recycle and produce paper and will establish within a year, a profitable business that will in future provide the community with alternative incomes.