Sogrome, Sierra Nevada: A Boulder Flatirons Rotary Club Global Grant Project
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This presentation is an overview of our Global Grant Project in Colombia.
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Sogrome, Sierra Nevada: A Boulder Flatirons Rotary Club Global Grant Project
- 1. Supporting Sogrome: A Boulder Flatirons Rotary Global Grant Project in Colombia
- 4. Sogrome is in the northern region of Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range & NP Pico Cristobal Colon
- 6. En route to Nabusímake, La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
- 10. 1. Education 2. Health 3. Income generation Community-led assessment
- 12. 1. Basic Education and Literacy
- 13. The School Project • Training in building repairs • Desks and chairs • Arhuaco approved books • Solar power for white board and AV equipment • Chickens for school lunch The existing school building School materials
- 15. Books in native language and Spanish “An indigenous language dies every two weeks”
- 16. 2. Health and nutrition
- 17. The clinic Nurse’s quarters Meds Census – kids age 1-10
- 20. Club Rotario de Santa Marta
- 22. Ruperto, Kristin, Rafa, Pedro @ 3 AM Pedro, Kristin, Ruperto, Rafa in Chemesquemena, end of the road
- 26. Protecting the ‘heart of the world’s sacred sites for centuries … Yet impacted by climate change
- 27. A spiritual experience with Mamu
- 30. Best Friends!
- 32. Project Accounting: Payments, receipts, cash
- 34. A Big THANKS to all of the supporting clubs!
- 35. A new connection: Ruperto visits the club in Santa Marta
- 36. A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. -- Lao Tzu
Editor's Notes
- Hello. I’m Kristin Wegner. I’m a member of the Boulder Flatirons Rotary Club. This is a presentation about our Global Grant project in Sogrome, Colombia.
- My involvement with Rotary actually began when I was an Environment Awareness Education Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic, where I worked on service-learning with high school students around water quality through a biosand water filter project. After the first year of my service, I met a member from the Joliet, Illinois Rotary club when I went home to Illinois for a short visit. The Rotary Club was so enthusiastic about the water filter project that they donated nearly $20,000 to my community – their technical guidance and financial support deeply transformed by PC experience – it kept me in-country for a third year of service with the Peace Corps.
- After Peace Corps, I met a few Rotarians when I moved to Colorado for my Master’s. I became involved in the Rotary/Peace Corps Alliance in District 5450, which led me to receive the Temple Buell Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. I studied Regional Environment Planning at the Universidad de los Andes and the Organizational leadersihp at the Sasana Institute in Bogotá, Colombia. You can see my host Rotary club in these pictures.
- In 2011, a Colombian friend from my school program asked me to help her and her husband to help out with a volunteer project through Microsoft, where they both work to this day. Through volunteering to help with Microsoft’s Digital Narrative Project about the Arhuaco indigenous community, I met my friend Ruperto. Ruperto is an Arhuaco indigenous leader from Sogrome, a community in the Sierra Nevada reservation in the northern part of Colombia. The Sierra Nevada is special because it’s the coast where Colombia was “discovered,” as well as the highest mountain peak near an ocean in the world.
- Before leaving Colombia, I traveled to Nabusímake, the capital of the protected indigenous reservation with my friends from Microsoft and the community leaders. Throughout the past few hundred years, the Arhuacos moved up into the mountains to survive the invasion of Christopher Columbus, the Capuchin missionaries, the FARC, and the paramilitary.
- Here I am with the community leaders. Danilo, on my left, is actually a senator for the national Colombian government. Ruperto, on my right, was an Economics student at the National University at the time – he now works at the Microsoft Foundation in Bogotá as a Technology Community Development Coordinator for the entire country. They wear their traditional dress, even when living and working in Bogotá. The white caps symbolize the white-peaked mountains of the Sierra – mountains that are now being impacted by climate change.
- About a month after my trip to Nabusímake, I returned to Colorado. I began working at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), where I now work for The GLOBE Program (www.globe.gov), an international science education program, and Climate Voices, a climate science speakers network supported by the UN Foundation. I actually get to work with both Rotary and Peace Corps Volunteers for my job!
- When I returned to the U.S., I still felt a strong connection to the community in the Sierra Nevada. I did a lot of research! Here you can see the article about the community in National Geographic, as well as the book “Secret Corners of the World.” I connected with both of the authors of these pieces – Wade Davis and Jim Billip – both of which have spent a lot of time with Danilo and Ruperto and their families.
- For the past few years, Ruperto and I have been in constant communication via Skype. This is a picture of his third child – a boy. He asked me to be the godmother!
- In the summer of 2012, Ruperto wrote to me to ask if Rotary could help his community with some projects. He sent a very, very detailed community-led assessment. There was an enormous level of detail in the Excel spreadsheets – he clearly has a background in Economics and now works at Microsoft! The three areas the community wanted to work on were: education, health, and income generation. The community is a 6 hour hike from the nearest town with electricity. There is no electricity or sanitation. There is a steady water supply from an aqueduct.
- In Sogrome,Ruperto’s hometown, there are 40 families, about 400 people in total. At least 200 people are children between 2- and 11- years-old
- One of the main projects the community wanted to work on was the reconstruction of the government-issued school. The Colombian government built the schools – four classrooms in total – decades ago. But during “The Violence,” the paramilitaries tore down some of the walls of the school so that they could have easier access to the building in order to store their weapons and provisions. The country is relatively safe now, but there are efforts to reconstruct communities like this around the country. Additionally, the Colombian government would pay salaries of four teachers if there were four full classrooms – so the community needed to fix this in order to take advantage of the government-supported teachers.
- Additional projects the community wanted to work on included: fixing some of the desks, chairs, and bookshelves they have received from donations, developing and printing books in their own native language, solar power for AV equipment, and a chicken project for school lunches.
- Here is the inside of the school.
- Having books in their own native language that depict people that look like them is incredibly important to the community, especially in efforts to help preserve their culture and help their children understand how to connect to mainstream Colombian/modern culture through the lens of their values of preserving the natural environment and living in balance with our ecosystem. Other Arhuaco communities have partnered with organizations such as the Global Heritage Fund and the Ministry of Education to create and print books.
- 2. Health and nutrition is the second area of focus. The community requested health training for the mothers, including nutrition classes.
- The community also requested solar power and a small refrigerator for the health clinic (another government-issued building). Here you can see the nurse’s quarters, as well as her meticulous records and medical equipment. The Colombian government pays a stipend to a nurse from the neighboring town – a nurse typically lives here three weeks out of each month. But for a Colombian from a big town that attended nursing school, living here without access to electricity away from her family and friends is difficult. The community asked for small PV panels to make it more livable, as well as refrigerate vaccines that are walked up from the nearest town – 6 hours away.
- The community chose two areas of focus for income generation: “mochilas” (hand-woven bags) and coffee. The women have been making these bags for centuries, they weave them while walking, while sitting in community meetings, and while taking care of their children. The average income per family is $1/day.
- Right as I left Colombia, they passed Free Trade with the United States, which provides huge opportunities to Colombians. Our goal is to help support the community connect to larger efforts for income generation. Here you can see a “mochila” bag store in the national Bogotá airport – a new addition from the Free Trade subsidies. Also, you can see that coffee from the Arhuaco capital, Nabusímake, is sold here in the U.S., in large chains such as Peet’s Coffee. Helping the community achieve increased quality production of mochilas and coffee and connecting them to national efforts to provide just and sustainable prices will greatly increase the quality of life in the community.
- In 2014, our Global Grant of $44,000 was approved. To help establish the relationship between the community and Rotary in Colombia and the U.S. I visited the community twice in 2014 . Here is the second visit – you can see Herb Kroehl and I as we visited the Santa Marta Rotary Club.
- The Santa Marta Rotary club is incredibly proud of their involvement in the project. This is HUGE because the relationship between the Arhuaco and mainstream Colombians has been strained at best for centuries. Arhuacos are typically marginalized and not particularly in contact with mainstream Colombians. In this picture, you can see how proud they are of this project, as well as proud image they chose of the indigenous leader.
- Herb and I traveled to Sogrome with Pedro Prieto, our Santa Marta Rotarian. Here we are at 3am, when we embarked on our journey from the entryway into the reservation, the last town with electricity for a few days.
- Here’s our hike.
- Here we are with our guides. Ruperto is on the right. Rafa, another community leader, is in between Herb and Ruperto. Rafa’s mother was a Spanish nun that decided to stay in Colombia when the Violence began. He and his siblings have a unique ability to provide services to the Arhuacos and connect them to Colombia in meaningful ways. He studied animal and farm production – he wlll be incredibly influential in the coffee and chicken production projects.
- The community is incredibly proud of their traditional building styles – here is the community center and a few houses. They are proud to build with materials from their local community and their goal is to live in ecological balance. At the same time, you can tell that this type of construction is quite different from that of the government-issued school.
- The community and their spiritual leaders, the mamus, believe that it is their mission in the world to protect the heart of the world, to teach us about how to live in balance with the natural world and to honor and protect it. This is a picture of one of their sacred sites. In talking with elders, I learned how these sacred mountains are impacted by climate change- they see much less snow than they did previously – which impacts their water supply and their sacred pilgrimages to their natural “church.”
- Before being able to meet with the community to discuss the projects, we first had to meet with the Mamu to cleanse ourselves and to honor the community, their ancestors, and the environment around us. We meditated on a rock while the Mamu conducted shamanic rituals. This was a bit of a challenge for Herb – a retired NOAA director that is quite used to getting projects implemented fast!
- After nearly one full day of meeting with the shaman, we were finally prepared to meet with the rest of the community. Given the community’s tragic past history with outside groups, it was incredibly important that we met with the community and explained who we were, what Rotary is, and how we were willing to support them to implement their projects. We conducted all meetings in Arhuaco, Spanish, and English.
- The women and children were present for all of the meetings, but sat in another side of the building. Here they are feeding their children.
- Pedro is a key connection for this project. He’s able to bridge Rotary, Colombian and American cultures, and help guide the community to develop their project benchmarks and goals. He’s also really, really funny.
- A few weeks after we left the community, they were able to begin Phase 1. Here’s a picture from the end of November- they purchased the materials and began training the repair of the schools with a local Arhuaco tradesman.
- They send us pictures of the payment, receipts, and cash being disbursed. This picture is important because this is the first time they have worked in this fashion – something that will help them as they begin to work with other organizations, such as Microsoft and an Italian ngo.
- Here you can see the progress they have made in a short time! The school has been repaired and is ready for a paid teacher to begin instruction!
- These are the clubs that have supported this project, as well as matching funds from our District 5450. We also received support from the Wilmington West Club in Delaware.
- This is one of the project successes – now as Ruperto travels for his job in Microsoft, he also attended the Santa Marta Rotary Club meeting. It’s fantastic to see how he now has a connection to Rotary and mainstream Colombians in Santa Marta.
- As Peace Corps and Rotarians, we are connectors. Here Ruperto is the one bringing light to his community through a small solar lamp I brought down to Colombia. Rotary has a strong ability to support local leaders to implement and lead their own projects. Our goal is for the community to feel like they did this themselves, with a bit of support. The future is bright!