SILOS and more

Saturday at a meeting of one of the three zones of the Dulce Nombre parish, Padre Efraín and the people talked about the social ministry of the parish. Padre Efraín explained how St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Ames is aiding in a project to teach people to make silos so that they can store basic grains. The money from St. Thomas will help initiate the project in the parish. Marcos, a jack-of-all-trades, will spend a month in the parish training people how to make silos as well as training others how to make and use ecological ovens and working with a pig production project in another community.

Father and the people then proceeded to decide what communities would be invited to send participants to the workshops. The first silo workshop will be for five persons from two adjoining villages which grow a fair amount of basic grains. The second will be held on the parish grounds in Dulce Nombre with five persons from each of the three zones of the parish. The participants will be trained how to make silos and will proceed to make several. Those who received the silos will pay for the materials and the payments will be put into a revolving fund so that other communities can make and have silos. In this way a small investment has the possibility of having major effects on the area.

On Monday Padre Efraín and I will be going out to the two villages and speaking with the people there. The silos are a way to begin to deal with food security in the area, enabling people to conserve their harvests – instead of having to sell them at a low price when the harvest comes in and then having to buy basic grains at higher prices when their supply runs out.

Fr. Efraín also hopes to develop some other agricultural projects, including small home vegetable gardens.

What was exciting at the meeting was the enthusiasm I saw. They see these as ways to help themselves as well as their communities. I am really glad that St. Thomas is helping this project.

Fr. Efraín also told the people about the efforts that St. Thomas Religious Education will be making to help provide the children in religious education in the parish with books. The books are fairly inexpensive but it would put a burden on many to have to pay the full price. This is a really fine act of solidarity and I hope that this can develop even more into a real mutual sharing.

The visit of the five folks from St. Thomas over Holy Week has meant a lot to the people of the parish. Fr. Efraín told me that it was very important for the people of the parish to see that there are Catholics in the US who come to be with them. They see a lot of evangelical groups coming but don’t see many Catholics. He also continued to note how the presence of the group in helping to construct the foundations for the church in Plan Grande really encouraged the people. At the zone meeting he mentioned how the women from St. Thomas worked hard, carrying big rocks. Not very subtly, he was trying to let the people know that women can do a lot. (Strike a blow against machismo!)