The network now has chapter groups on over 70 .university campuses, sponsoring regional and national conferences, placing .student interns with community organizations in 10 countries, sending one hundred cyclists into the heart of America each summer [see preceding story on Bike-Aid], and sponsoring s~eaking tours by grassroots organizers from overseas. Over the past eleven years, ODN .has sponsored over 100 small-scale projects throughout Asia, Latin America and Africa. Building links and exchanges with these communities, ODN has become both an advocate and a sounding board for a grassroots perspective of development. Believing firmly that communities are the only ones qualified to plan. their futures, ODN was eager to support the work of Kechuaymara. Kechuaymara and ODN found each other, and began collaborating in 1986. At the direction of Kechuaymara', ODN garnered support for a "lecheria" (dairy project), a llama-rearing endeavor, and several small scale water/ projects, including the total refurbishing of a disused, inappropriate old Alliance for Progress-built system. ODN, for its part, ·used its connection with 1 Kechuaymara to place student interns and bring attention to development fundraising. In 1990, the two groups collaborated on the Nutrici6n y Cultivos Andinos (Nutrition and Andean Cultivation) project to improve quinoa yields and reintroduce the cultivation of tarwi for consumption in rural Bolivia. Both of these crops are indigenous to the altiplano region and are very high in protein, but imported crops such as wheat had replaced them. The project included Above, indigenous children, in the Bolivian village of Payachata, collect water'in the Spring of1992. Th'is pump is one ofmany installed throughout the region by this grassroots foundation run by Quechua and Aymara people. Below, Pascual Apaza ofthe Kechuaymara Foundation works with a villager in one ofthe greenhouses builtfor village self-sufficiency'agricultural projects. Microirrigation techniques provided by Kechuaymara help make available a greater variety ofvegetables, mostly indigenous, for village consumption. RAIN Summer 1994 Volume XIV, Number 4 Page 35
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz