Nicola, Orlando’s daughter, is now a senior at the Eloy Alfaro High School. She told her teacher about the work that she has done with Planet Drum, including revegetation and gardening workshops, while she was a student at the Montúfar School. Her teacher liked the ideas, and decided to bring the eco-club students to the Planet Drum greenhouse to see first-hand the work that we […]
A large group of GSE volunteers from northern California and a handful of students from local eco-clubs visited the Planet Drum greenhouse to participate in a tree transplanting workshop. The visitors learned about Planet Drum’s revegetation project and assisted in transplanting approximately 250 seedlings from seedbeds to bottles. Work included mixing soil, cutting and filling bottles, and transplanting trees. The group was very motivated and […]
Students from the Catholic University, where the Planet Drum greenhouse is located, joined in revegetation efforts for a morning. Trees from the greenhouse were taken to the hillside behind the University and planted under the supervision of field foreman Orlando Arias. This year the University has a new director, who has expressed interest in increasing collaboration with its students and Planet Drum’s revegetation project. So […]
December 6th, 2014 – March 17th, 2015 Field Report It’s been an odd rainy season so far, drier than normal. In January it hardly rained at all, and in February it only rained towards the end of the month. Finally, now in March it’s raining a little more. As of early February, only 20% of farmers in the province had planted anything at all, which […]
September 1 – December 5, 2014 Field Report In September, with the help of volunteers Joe and Grace, an extension to the greenhouse was constructed in order to have more space for storing supplies and for working. The ramada used for storage was tripled in size. There is now much more space for storing plastic bottles and a new area for working in the shade. […]
June 11 – July 29, 2014 Field Report The past seven weeks have been dedicated to hosting revegetation workshops with local school students at the greenhouse. The Fanny de Baird school has 16 groups of students (averaging 40 students in each group) who are in the proper age range for participating with Planet Drum. So far students from the 8th and 9th grades (ten groups) […]
When I started working as the Community Engagement Intern at Planet Drum (PD), I was excited to join the team and help out in any way that I could. The first weeks as a Drummer involved working at some of the restoration sites that Planet Drum has been caring for during the past few years, including Bellavista, La Universidad Católica, and Bosque en Medio de […]
April 21 – June 10, 2014 Field Report The Revegetation Project is moving in exciting new directions and expanding its scope. The goal for 2014 is now to produce 15,000 trees in the greenhouse. 13,000 of them will be distributed to locals and 2,000 trees will be planted and maintained directly by Planet Drum. Revegetation workshops held at the greenhouse are an important way to […]
November 5, 2013 – February 5, 2014 Field Report We ended 2013 with visits to the greenhouse from several more groups of students from the Sathya Sai and Montufar schools. The children thoroughly enjoyed the visits. Some of the younger groups of kids were actually the most knowledgeable during the lecture portion of the workshop and enthusiastic doing the hands-on work. With help from the […]
August 20, 2013 – November 5, 2013 Field Report In late August, a GPS site map of the revegetation sites from 2005-2013 was completed with the initiative taken by field research intern Joffrey Iboud. After several months of plotting GPS coordinates at all of the sites, the data was entered into a computer with maps that were acquired from the city government. The result is […]