July, 2016

Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Let it Grow - GVI Playa del Carmen Volunteers House Home Garden
Objective
Minimize the environmental impact on the Playa house and projects, and raise awareness of environmental issues amongst volunteers and children in the centers.

Summary
In order to raise awareness and encourage a green lifestyle for the volunteers, the Playa team
created a home garden of vegetable and fruit. As these vegetables grow, the volunteers and staff
can use them for cooking meals, thus saving money on weekly shopping and knowing where the
food is coming from/how it is handled before being consumed.
Report
The first goal of the Millennium Development Goals is to eradicate extreme hunger and
poverty. When one of our short-term interns went to Invasores for the first time and heard a child
say he did not have breakfast that morning because he wanted to wait until lunch to eat so his family could have more food that day, she knew she had to do something about it. That was when she
got the idea of creating a community garden for not only Invasores, but for the volunteer house
itself as well. Although the establishment of a community garden at Invasores has not been fully
completed yet, the intern was able to complete part of her project with a flourishing garden in the
front patio of the volunteers house.
The intern decided
to start at the volunteers
house with the planting to
ensure that the plants
could grow and be beneficial to the Invasores community. In this process, she
researched what people
have found to be the best
fruits and vegetables used
in home gardens within the
Yucatan peninsula, while
stumbling upon a specific
kind of gardening called
Container Vegetable Gardening, which is exactly
what it sounds like - gardening in containers. After
completing a list of necessities and finding used
containers in the Fig. 1 Volunteers showing some of the containers used for the garden

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houses recycling bins, she set off to the supermarket to obtain the seeds and soil necessary to
plant. After planting the seeds, she organized a day where volunteers were able to paint the containers. Three days after planting, the tomatoes, beans, and peppers began to sprout.

The assess whether the community in Invasores was interested in growing a community
garden or not, completed a needs-based assessment of the site through an 8-question survey, to
help with future needs/projects for Invasores as well. The data gathered consisted of a total of 20
verbal/written surveys, where 10 were completed, 5 were declined, 2 were unreturned, and 3 were
not completed. Some of the questions consisted of the demographics of the household (ages), the
steadiness of the income, needs of the community, opinions on a community garden, other unmet
needs, among other questions asked. The data showed that within the inhabitants of the area,
there is an average of 1.5 children and 2 adults per household, with an average of 4.5 people per
household. Other information found included 80% of the families researched do not have a steady
income, and 100% feel that a community garden would benefit them.
Even though that intern is no longer in the project and the communal garden hasnt been established, the survey done was the first step towards identifying the necessities of the place, and
several ideas have already come up. The home garden at the volunteers house is a great first step
towards implementing a communal garden in Invasores as it will be a valuable experience on how to
grow vegetables than can be passed on to the community later on.

If you would like to know more about the community projects in Playa del Carmen, please visit:
http://www.gvi.co.uk/location/yucatan/

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