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Blanca Ruiz, IALA Ixim Ulew graduate, with women from La Montañita, building an A-frame during a soil and water conservation workshop, June 2020.
This year, Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) leaders began to establish a small-scale demonstration farm in La Montañita, a union point for seven communities in the hills nearby the city of Estelí, where the ATC has an historic organizing presence. This is part of a strategy to expand agroecological models of food production, based upon traditional ancestral knowledge and farming methods in harmony with Mother Earth and human health.
With the support of facilitators and graduates from IALA Ixim Ulew (the international social movement La Via Campesina’s agroecology school in Nicaragua), this year, the ATC organized a series of agroecology workshops focusing on soil and water conservation. Workshop participants constructed a rainwater harvest tank (important in a drought-prone area that is affected by climate change) and began diversifying the parcel by planting different fruit trees, which will help families expand traditional corn and bean production, which can take place only during the rainy season (around May through November).
The demonstration farm will serve as a space for teaching and learning for union and cooperative leaders in the community. It will also serve as a space for current IALA Ixim Ulew students to realize their practicums, and a model farm to recruit IALA students from the rural communities around La Montañita.
Many friends of the ATC have visited and fallen in love with the beautiful Montañita in their visits to Nicaragua. In the spirit of internationalism, both the ATC and Friends of the ATC intend the farm and training center to be a place for solidarity delegations and interns to dedicate work time and enjoy the literal fruits of their collective labor.
Help this project continue into 2021! Your donation will support:
Digging swales at the demonstration farm
Dragonfruit supports, awaiting dragonfruit transplants
Support us in raising $4000 by December 31, 2020. Your donations support internationalism, agroecology and solidarity with the communities in Estelí.
Please follow our campaign on social media (Facebook and Instagram), or sign up to receive emails at friendsatc.org.
About the organizations involved in this fundraiser:
Born in 1978 within the context of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) is an organization of struggle that represents more than 50,000 workers in farmworker unions and agricultural cooperatives. In the 1990s, the ATC helped found the international movement for food sovereignty, La Via Campesina, and continues to organize today in communities like La Montañita to improve the quality of life for peasants in the countryside.
The Friends of the ATC solidarity network organizes to raise awareness about the ATC and mobilize resources for its continued organizing, especially the agroecology school for young people that it coordinates called IALA Ixim Ulew.