Youth Environment Group

LENGUA-LANGUAGE: Spanish

Comité Ecológico del Papaturro

Name: Comité Ecológico Jóvenes en Luchar del Papaturro

Community: Papaturro

Location: Suchitoto, Suchitoto El Salvador

Project Description:

One of the new educational signs -

The ‘Comité Ecológico’ is a youth environment group from the campesino community of Papaturro, about 20mins from the beautiful, sleepy town of Suchitoto. Just a few weeks before their first anniversary (April 20th), the group has 27 members, all aged between 11 and 23yrs.
Seres first got involved with this group of enthusiastic and energetic young people on a visit to the Instituto de Permacultura de El Salvador. It was here that Corrina Grace (Seres Executive Director) first met Antonio – the founder of the youth environment group. At 23 yrs, Antonio is a truly inspirational and motivating young man, dedicated to educate his community about climate change and teach them to protect and care for their environment (read more about Antonio’s Story). Through Antonio, we became involved in his community of Suchitoto and started working with the Comité Ecológico.

With limited funding and access to resources, the group has made great progress in the year that they have been working within their community. They have run activities to clean up the streets and rivers, placed environmental education messages around the community, provided guidelines for the treatment of solid waste (for recycling) in all the households, and continued to provide education to the other youth and children within the school. And their plans don’t stop there. In a recent workshop that we held with the group, they were asked to brainstorm about what projects they saw for the future: banning the use of plastic bags and bottles in tiendas, introducing sustainable tree harvesting for firewood, and creating a network of ecological communities within their area.

Seres is working with the Comité Ecológico to help them grow, develop and continue doing their great work.

Biodigestor workshop with Seres and the Comité Ecológico

We are providing educational and capacity-building workshops, providing ideas and helping to develop new projects, and working to provide demonstration technologies within the community.
In the near future, we will be installing a biodigestor to replace the gas cookstove in one of the community households, helping develop educational materials for the committee to give workshops in the local school, and creating worm farms that will give the committee fertilizer to sell and use as a fundraiser.

NEW!!! PROJECT UPDATES – click on the links below to find out the latest news.

September 2010

View photos on Flickr photostream.