CELL Central America Semester Program Blog

On April 24, 2008, we completed a three month/three country (Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica) semester program focusing on a theme of "sustainability through community." We visited 24 amazing, yet very different, communities committed to sustainability - ranging from small community ventures and women's cooperatives to large international organizations like Heifer International. We rolled up our shirt sleeves and volunteered in a variety of service-learning projects from building organic gardens and chicken houses with Sustainable Harvest in Honduras to volunteering with Widecast, an international organization researching and protecting endangered sea turtles in the Gandoca Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. We visited indigenous communities. We partnered with the Northwest Earth Institute, using their study guides to explore topics like Voluntary Simplicity, Choices for Sustainability, and Human Ecology. We explored what sustainability means on various levels, including: personal, community, and global. We developed personal action plans that will enable all of us to leave our time together with a specific plan of what we can each do to implement sustainable practices back home. We leave empowered with the hope for a sustainable future because we have seen individuals and communities living sustainably. We leave knowing and feeling, as Carlos (an enthusiastic Honduran committed to sustainable gardening) said in prophetically powerful words: "It is possible!"

Below are several student reflections on their 2008 CELL Central America Semester Program.

Carmen: Looking back on all I have learned from this experience, I cannot imagine not having done this. This has been and will continue to be such an important part of my life. I will continue learning from this experience for the rest of my life. I feel like this has given me the power to be a better global citizen, and to make a positive difference in the communities in which I live. The program certainly has expanded my whole view on sustainability, especially in the ways in which community plays such an important role. I feel like I have a much better perspective and much more wisdom not just in the area of sustainability, but also in the many issues facing third world countries and things that are and are not being done. Overall, this could be the best study abroad opportunity out there!

Jonas: This CELL program has had a major impact on my life. I have learned so many things from my professor and my fellow classmates, not only about sustainability through community, but also about my life. It has rekindled my ambition to improve the health of our ecosystem as well as given me an action plan with steps I am going to take when I return home in order to begin living more sustainably. It has also led me to realize the importance of strong support systems. Because of this, I have included several steps in my action plan in order to help build and strengthen my relationships with my family and friends. This way we can all have a stronger support system on which to rely. This semester abroad has taught me so many things that I will take with me for the rest of my life. I will also be able to take these learning experiences and make new discoveries from them.

Dave T: By seeing so many different communities and organizations of varying sizes, I feel like I have a greater understanding of what sustainability is and how we can achieve it. I definitely feel this experience has changed the way I see the world. I have Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica in me - the stories, the people, the landscapes, and so much more. I've seen how people live and work and have learned so much from them and so much about myself. I've had my flame relit inside me to strive toward a more sustainable world. I was in a funk and I have new found purpose. Plus, if these communities can do it here, it can be done everywhere. Looking at the world today: there are a lot of problems or a lot of possibilities - it is all in how we look at it. We can continue to build an army or we can rebuild the world so everyone lives meaningful and purposeful lives. I have decided to walk the latter path seeing a healthy world for both humans and the natural world. I've discovered so many things, and I know there is still more waiting for me after I leave Central America.

Dana: CELL definitely expanded my appreciation and understanding of "sustainability through community." Before the trip all I knew about the subject was what I learned in school. This consisted of the facts that: for tourism to be sustainable, community members must be involved in ownership and higher level jobs; that cultures should be respected; that, to be sustainable, one must observe carrying capacities. Though people had told me about these things, they were only words. I had no "true" experience with this. My view was expanded greatly as well. I now have a much broader view. I realize that "sustainability" has to do with many things. Sustainability has to do with food and having enough of it. Sustainability has to do with teaching people how to do things rather than giving them things... One thing that has to be a part of the road to building sustainability is community. There are many pieces to sustainability, but community is key. Everywhere we went and everyone we visited had a community piece. There are many different pieces to many different programs, but community seems to be a common thread. Before this semester, I had no idea. I am now encouraged to strengthen my own community. I believe that I will be discovering lessons for years to come because of this trip. I now have the base-knowledge to begin making my own life more sustainable, and voluntarily simplistic.

Max: Overall, I am completely satisfied with my experiences with this program and would not, and could not, replace them with anything. This has been such a valuable part of my education and an unforgetable part of my life. I would recommend this program to anyone wanting to explore their lives in relation to communities around the world, the world itself, sustainability, indigenous cultures, and so much more. I will cherish every lesson I have learned, and in the true nature of sustainability, pass on these lessons to the people I meet.

If you'd like to find out more about CELL's study abroad programs, you can visit us at: http://www.cellonline.org/ or e-mail us at: info@cellonline.org or call us at (207) 230-4025. We look forward to hearing from you! Below are reflections from some of our semester learning experiences.

Sea Turtles and Sustainability Through Community

For the past three months, we've been having an amazing adventure in Central America - daily inspired by individuals and communities committing their lives to building sustainability through community. During the last two weeks of our semester program, we are volunteering with an international sea turtle conservation program in a small village called Gandoca on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica ten kilometers north of Panama. We are working in the Gandoca Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge in the beautiful Talamanca region. There is a remarkable story here...

Let's start with the sea turtles. Playa Gandoca is one of the most important sea turtle nesting sites in the South Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica with three nesting species (Leatherback, the most abundant; followed by the Hawksbill and Green sea turtles). Since 1991, the sea turtle conservation program at Gandoca beach has tagged over 2,100 nesting Leatherback female turtles. Females mate every two to three years and can nest as often as 12 times during a reproductive year.

Sea turtles are keystone species (not only an indicator of the overall health of our ocean ecosystems, but a species critical to the balance of marine environments) and they are endangered. Worldwide their population has decreased over 80% in the last ten years due to water pollution, loss of nesting habitat to development and beach erosion, poaching of eggs, drowings caused when caught in fishing nets, and ingestion of plastic bags floating in the ocean - which they confuse for jellyfish - their main food source. The Costa Rica coastal zone once supported populations of sea turtles that numbered in the tens of thousands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, mariners' records document "flotillas" of turtles so dense that net fishing was impossible. Their teeming numbers were a dominant force in the ecology of coral reefs and sea grass meadows and in the economy of local communities. Sea turtles have been exploited for centuries by coastal communites as a source of food; as a base material for cosmetics, jewelry, and art crafts; and, more recently, as a major ecotourism attraction.

The Leatherbacks are truly impressive. These gentle giants can weigh over a ton and lay over 150 eggs in each nest. They nest at night in the black sand just beyond the high tide mark. Part of our volunteer duties at Gandoca is to participate in four hour evening beach patrols. We have two patrol shifts - one from 8 to 12 p.m. and one from 12 to 4 a.m. The ten kilometer beach is divided into three sectors, and each patrol is responsible for patroling one section of beach during their shift. There are three to four members per patrol with an experienced team leader. There is also a six hour egg hatchery shift that rotates around the clock (eggs that have been layed in vulnerable spots on the beach are relocated to the safety of the hatchery). Shifts alternate from day-to-day, so if you have the "grave yard" patrol shift from 12 to 4 a.m. (or the 12 to 6 a.m. hatchery shift), you get an earlier shift the next day/night.

For work projects during the daytime, we build sea turtle nesting cages and learn how to build proper-sized egg chambers in the hatchery to relocate eggs that are layed in precarious locations. (Note: Relocating the eggs has increased hatchery success from 40% on the beach to over 80% in the hatchery). In the afternoons, we clear heavy logs and other debris off the beach, help build new hatchery sites (shoveling a ton of sand during a several hour work session), etc. So, when it comes time for our evening shift, we are pretty tired. During our night patrols, we walk back and fourth single file along a two to three kilometer section of beach looking for nesting female sea turtles. We walk tired and in darkness as lights can scare off the nesting females. But when you come across a 2,000 pound sea turtle at 2 a.m. crawling out of the sea and beginning to build her nest, your exhaustion immediately evaporates in the excitement of being so close to this magnificent endangered creature and knowing that you are playing a vital role in her (and her offspring's) survival.

Once we discover a female nesting, we stealthily approach her from the backside and wait while she digs her egg chamber with her two back flippers - over one meter deep in the sand. Just before she lays her eggs, we position a plastic bag under her tail to collect the batch (takes about 20 minutes for her to lay 130 or more eggs). While one or two people hold the plastic bag, two others gather data on her size, overall physical condition, tag number, etc. and then record the information on the data sheet. Once she starts to lay her eggs, she goes into a

semi-transe state and is oblivious to the work we are doing around her. Once she is done laying her eggs, she fills in the chamber with sand and then returns to the sea. We then relocate the eggs to the closest hatchery. (Note: some eggs that are layed in safe positions are left where she lays them). It's really exciting to be a part of the work to save these beautiful animals from extinction. When I see how one plastic bag eaten by a sea turtle can kill it, I am more determined to use my reusable cloth bags when grocery shopping so I can play a small role in reducing the billions of these bags that discarded annually, some of which end up in places like our oceans. There are so many small things we can all do that, collectively, have such a huge positive impact on our planet.

The sea turtle conservation program at Gandoca has been incredibly successful. In the late l980s, 99% of the eggs layed on this beach were illegally stolen. Last year (2007) only 2% were poached. In addition to helping save an endangered keystone species, we are also learning about a very successful program that gives villagers a tangible reason to conserve sea turtles. Here's the story...

Gandoca is a poor, rural village along the Caribbean Coast. Most families here have struggled to achieve a sustainable income. In the late l980s village residents stole sea turtle eggs and sold them illegally generating $3,000 U.S. dollars per year for the entire community. Association ANAI, a Costa Rican community sustainability organization, approached the community and asked: "What if we help you to conserve sea turtles and you can make a lot more money conserving them than poaching their eggs?" This captured the community's interest! ANAI recognized that they needed to provide a viable economic alternative to poaching sea turtle eggs - an alternative that would be attractive financially to the community. So, ANAI helped the community to develop rustic chalets where volunteers come to Gandoca and pay $17 dollars per day to live with community families, receive three hot meals, and volunteer in the sea turtle conservation program. "If you build it, they will come." And they came! Today, several thousand volunteers come to Gandoca from around the world to help save the turtles. The volunteer's inscription fee goes to supporting the conservation program and the $17/person/day fee goes directly to the families they are staying with. How successful has this model been? As mentioned previously, the village made $3,000 poaching sea turtle eggs over ten years ago. Last year, the village made over $225,000 conserving sea turtles. The villagers today are the biggest supporters of sea turtle conservation.

This volunteer conservation model has been incredibly successful, and it came about through a simple, yet profound recognition that it's about sustainability through community. If we want to effectively protect a resource, we need to find imaginative ways for people to recognize the benefits of doing so... I am so grateful for what I am learning about community sustainability and for what I am learning about what I can do to make a difference!

Costa Rica: Reflections about Community Sustainability

After an amazing adventure in the rain forest of Kekoldi, we spent a day snorkling around a coral reef - exploring an underwater jungle of tropical fish and sea life and enjoying the warm water and beautiful surf of Cahuita, a funky tropical village along the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica. The next day we traveled deeper into the Talamanca rain forest to the homeland of the BriBri indigenous people. We stayed at Finca Educativa, a community sustainability organization working with 26 different indigenous communities - helping local people develop micro-businesses and ecotourism ventures that enable them to become economically self-sustaining while also conserving their environment and culture.

One of the sites we visited was a remote village called Yorkin ("Your-keen). To get there, we traveled with guides by dugout canoe 10 kilometers upstream along the Yorkin River on the Costa Rica/Panama border. It was an amazing experience with lush tropical vegetation along the river banks and hills, an incredible diversity of bird species, and banana and cocoa plantations in the river valleys. We arrived at the "Casa de Mujeres," an ecotourism lodge where we learned about their organic agricultural practices, their use of medicinal plants, how they build their homes with materials borrowed from the forest, and their delicious organic cocoa (chocolate) business. We got to see the whole chocolate production process from picking the bean pods off the trees to drying them; from crushing the beans to grinding them into a thick, rich dark chocolate paste; and, finally, to adding sugar to form a gooey chocolate candy that melted in our mouths as we oooed and awed. It was the freshest and most delicious chocolate we had ever tasted and an important income producer for this remote community.

We learned how this ecotourism venture is enabling the BriBri to generate a sustainable income and to continue living in their river community nestled between the beautiful Talamanca mountains. Like so many of the sustainable communities we have visited, it is the women who are organizing to form partnerships to produce sustainable income for their families and villages while also protecting their environment and preserving their culture. We have seen so many inspiring examples of sustainability through community during this semester program - examples that give us hope for the possibility of achieving global sustainability. We have seen so many examples of what one person, one women's group, and one village can do to inspire a whole community's commitment to live sustainably.

When we look at the problems the world faces, I think we are starting to feel like we will never be deeply discouraged again because we have see the power of people working together to solve local problems. And, in a very real way, all global problems are local problems that have creative solutions through community. I think we are all feeling inspired to return home and to work with our communities to explore ways that we can live more respectfully and sustainably. We are learning how hope is a renewable resource.

Sustainability Through Community: Costa Rica

We left Tegucigalpa, Honduras on a whirlwind 13 hour bus ride to Managua, Nicaragua on March 29th. A quick night's sleep, and we were off on another 10 hour bus ride to San Jose, Costa Rica. After a day of talks in San Jose on environmental issues facing Costa Rica with an Emphasis on successful programs linking conservation and development, we headed to the beautiful, mountainous, rain forest region of Talamanca on the east coast bordering Panama and Costa Rica.

During our first 10 days in Talamanca, we are working with Association Wak Ka Koneke, a community development organization within the Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve. The Indigeneious BriBri people have lived in these mountains for many generations. In the words of the BriBri:

We have seen many changes and know that more will come in the future. We would like to ensure a sustainable future for our children by protecting our natural resources and our cultural heritage. Our bird and iguana conservation and ecotourism programs are some of the ways that we are able to do this.

Through partnering with Kekoldi, CELL is learning how the BriBri are conserving one of the most biologically diverse land areas in the world while at the same time providing a sustainable economic benefit to their families. The BriBri are a beautiful, culturally proud, hardworking indigenous tribe. They formed the preserve and the Wak Ka Koneke non profit organization so that they could do biological research, run ecotourism and educational programs, and generate revenue that will enable them to expand their reserve by purchasing additional land for conservation. As Sebastian, a BriBri leader and founder of Wak Ka Koneke says, "Our goal is to conserve our land so that future generations can enjoy what we have now."

We spent five days in Kekoldi learning about their conservation and education programs. On the second day, we visited the Iguana Conservation program. Green Iguanas are an endangered species in Costa Rica as they are hunted for meat, oil, and skins to make drums. Only one-in-one-hundred iguanas in the wild survive to adulthood, and most of these have been hunted. However, at the Kekoldi Iguana Conservation Farm, 95% of the iguanas grow to maturity (in two years) and are then released into the wild. This program has been very successful in helping to restore this endangered species to the Talamanca region.

For the next two days, we participated in two bird conservation programs: 1) mist netting song birds, and 2) monitoring raptor migration. Birds are an important indicator species of the health of local ecosystems and, in the case of migratory species, an indicator of the health of populations and ecosystems globally. The loss of wild habitat to development; toxic pesticides; and air, land, and water pollution, are causing the decline of bird species worldwide. Preserves like Kekoldi not only provide vital habitat for birds, they also help ensure the survival of song birds and many other species with whom they share their habitat.

Mist netting: This was really cool. We set up three - 12 meter long by 3 meter high fine-meshed black nets that are virtually invisible in the forest. Then we waited. It was like going downstairs Christmas morning... We caught a variety of birds: long-billed and strip-throated hermit humming birds, ochre-belly fly catchers, white-collored manakins, etc. There are over 50 species of humming birds alone in Costa Rica. This place is a birders paradise. The humming birds are my favorite - darting around like a 2 inch helicopters on steroids.

Once we capture the birds, we then record information: age, sex, physical condition, resident or migratory status, and weight. A tiny band with serial number is usually placed on their right leg, and they are then released into the rain forest no worse for wear. This research not only generates scientific knowledge on the biodiversity of the Kekoldi Reserve, the data on the migratory species becomes part of an international data base providing valuable information on migratory patterns, physical characteristics, and ecosystem management.

Raptors: Kekoldi is the world's second largest raptor migration site with 3.5 million birds flying over the reserve's observation tower annually. Seventeen species of raptors migrate across the skies of the reserve and three species (Turkey Vulture, Swainson's Hawk, and Broadwing Hawk) account for 98% of all birds counted. Raptors are also important environmental indicators. An extreme example of this is from Argentina where a farmer found 5,000 birds poisoned to death by pesticides a few years ago. With this information and data collected from bird migrations, conservationists in Argentina were able to successfully lobby for the prohibition of harmful agricultural pesticides (dangerous chemicals supplied by the United States and harmful to not only birds, but to other species - including humans).

We also had a chance to hike deep into the rain forest to a remote waterfall. It was amazing - a steady stream of water cascading down a sheer rock face into a deep, fresh water pool 70 feet below. The waterfall and surrounding cliff formed an amphitheater with lush, dense, mist-soaked vegetation covering a steep 280 degree bowl around us. We jumped off a rock cliff into the deep, cool water and swam over to the waterfall to soak in the mist and shower of plummetting water and the magic of this tropical paradise.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here in Central America. We're learning so much about "sustainability through community"
- learning that it's not simply about preserving rain forests, or protecting animal and plant species. It's also about people; and it's about community. If we want to preserve rain forests (or any other habitat), we have to find ways for people to meet their economic needs without destroying the natural environment where they live. Kekoldi is on a sustainable path to do just that; and these beautiful people are teaching us how "It is possible."

For more information on Kekoldi, you can check out their website at: www.kekoldi.org and for more information on CELL, you can check our our website at: http://www.cellonline.org/.

CELL Service-Learning with Sustainable Harvest Honduras

During our last week in Honduras, CELL is partnering with Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) and their local affiliate Sustainable Harvest Honduras. SHI helps rural families become economically and environmentally sustainable. This community based organization was founded by Florence Reed (¨Flo¨), a former Peace Corps volunteer who had a vision of empowering poor families in Central America to improve their incomes and quality of life while preserving and restoring their local environment. Throughout our semester program, we have seen inspiring examples of people like Flo and the amazing things they are doing when they commit their lives to following their passion.

Currently Sustainable Harvest Honduras works with 548 families in 42 communities in the mountain districts of Santa Barbara and Yoro. Many poor families still practice slash and burn techniques to clear their land and grow crops. After two years, however, the land suffers from severe erosion (without trees and other vegetation to hold the soil) and loss of soil productivity. SHI teaches families, through community extension agents, how to turn their marginally productive soil into a fertile environment for growing crops by using compost, permaculture, and organic practices. SHI recognizes that in order for an environmental program to be successful, people´s economic needs have to also be taken into consideration (i.e. people need to have viable ways to earn an income while protecting their environment).

One family, for example, increased their annual income from their land from $80 to over $1,000 when they switched to organic farming practices. SHI works with families for five years training them in sustainable practices. Once a family graduates, they are then able to provide for themselves as well as teach their neighbors what they have learned. In this way, families not only learn valuable skills, increase their incomes, and protect their environment; they also gain something equally important - the self-respect and dignity that come from helping others.

SHI helps families with all aspects of sustainability from reforestation to small integrated fish farms, from composting to making organic pesticides and fertilizers, etc. The following program descriptions will give you a flavor of the work SHI is doing in Honduras (examples borrowed from SHI´s 2007 Annual Report).

Feed the Future: Organic Vegetable Gardens

Proper nutrition is essential to good health, especially with children. Unfortunately, many children living in Central America are malnourished due to a lack of vital nutrients in their diets. These children live in places where most of the families fall below the poverty level. Fruits and vegetables are considered luxuries that only the wealthy can afford. In fact, many of the villages where SHI works, over 75% of the families have never had access to even the most basic garden vegetables such as tomatoes and carrots. SHI provides seeds, training, and support to families desperate to grow nourishing produce to sustain themselves. Now, over 90% of the families working with SHI have planted organic gardens. Not only are the children getting the nutrition they need, the families are experiencing increased income as they are now able to sell excess produce to markets and to their neighbors.

Wood-Conserving Stoves


Imagine breathing in smoke fumes equivalent to smoking eight packs of cigarettes per day, every day. In Honduras, women and children were breathing in that much smoke daily just from the open fireplaces they used for cooking and heating. Now, with help from SHI, hundreds of families are being taught how to build and use simple Lorena stoves, which use chimneys to channel the smoke outside rather than into the room. In addition to improving the air quality in a home, the stoves are beneficial because they are constructed mostly of local materials, are easy to build, and reduce firewood useage by half. These stove are greatly improving the lives of many families throughout Central America.


We are having an amazing week working alongside local families building wood-conserving stoves, creating organic gardens, building low-maintenance chicken coops, and living in homestays in rural villages. We are learning how one person, one family, and one village can make a big difference when they work together in community to achieve a common goal called sustainability! For more information on SHI, you can check out their website at http://www.sustinableharvest.org/.


If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in the room. (Gandhi)

Below are several student reflections on our time with SHI.

Sarah: This week our CELL group traveled to the barrios of Ocatal, a new SHI project village. We have worked on three different projects at five different homes in the first two days. When I first arrived, I was taken to my homestay and greeted by Dona Maria. She is a short and somewhat timid woman in her mid 60s, but she has a wonderful warm smile and is very sweet. Her husband, Don Mercedes, is an energetic and friendly man always making sure that we have everything we need. I have felt very much at home with their loving hospitality.

The first day we worked at Don Antonio´s house making a fence for the garden, digging up the soil, making raised beds, and planting carrots and radishes. We worked alongside Don Antonio and Herman, the agricultural extension agent from SHI. Don Antonio showed us around his house -excitedly pointing out the different plants and animals and showing us the mango trees recently planted. As we worked, we talked with Herman and Don Antonio, and they explained the working of the garden and showed us how to use ash, pine needles, and rich compost to create soil for plant growth. During our hours there, more family members and children appeared to watch and see what was going on. They peered around posts and slowly came closer to watch and then scurry back when you smiled at them. After we finished planting the seeds, Don Antonio smiled and seemed pleased with his new garden.

It was empowering to see SHI´s work in action and how they are helping people to help themselves and their environment. SHI really focuses on the community and educating people so that they can live healthier, happier, and more sustainable lives. I really believe that this community support, knowledge, and connectedness is what makes sustainability possible. By working diligently and closely with families and commmunities, SHI is building the basis and potential for a sustainable future.

Dave T: Sustainable Harvest is a great NGO helping families and communities here in Honduras. They hire community members (agricultural extension workers) even though they don´t have university degrees. Even though they may not have a degree, they have something much more important, they know how to speak to and teach members in their community, they know how to use the local materials, and they know what works in these conditions. When they (SHI) go into a community, they set up a meeting and see what the community has, what they do, then they see who wants to work with them. They let the communities know that there are no free handouts, but that they will provide help to families that want to help themselves. Their big project seems to be community gardens so families can have plants to give them the vitamins they are not getting from corn and beans.

Another big project for SHI is building efficient stoves with chimneys. This allows the family to burn less wood, but more importantly, the health benefits are enormous with the smoke leaving the home. This works together with another project, reforestation: planting fruit trees and other trees to help conserve water and regulate temperature/climate in these communities.

I think SHI is doing a great job here working on sustainability. They realize that one can´t have an environmental program without taking people´s needs into account because without meeting the needs of people, environmental degradation would continue. By providing education, they are showing people that they don´t have to slash and burn to grow crops, how to increase nutrition and improve health, and how to look holistically at a community´s needs.

Jonas: Sustainable Harvest seems like a wonderful organization to me. One of the things I really like is how much they have focused on new, more efficient ovens and stoves which use less firewood and vent smoke outside. This helps solve health problems while also saving the family from collecting so much firewood. On our first day here, Greg and I worked with Dona Maria to build a family garden. I really like the way SHI allows us to help the family build the garden right alongside them. That way everybody is involved and everybody gets to learn how the process works. I also really like how we are able to live with the people in the community because it allows for a much richer experience. Just like with Grupo Fenix (a program we spent a month with in Nicaragua), I feel more deeply connected with this program simply because we get to live in the homes and don´t simply stay for a couple of hours and then leave. Once a community project is started, SHI´s first goal is to work with the family on an initial project such as building a garden. In this way, both SHI and the family build trust. Then, after that, the family is more likely to listen to the suggestions of SHI, such as not using slash and burn techniques, something which is hard for them to understand because they have been doing it for so long.

CELL Honduras: Cloud Forest and Bees

Although most of CELL´s field trips and service-learning experiences take place within sustainable communities, during the course of our semester program, we also vist a variety of natural areas such as: volcanoes, cloud forests, coastal beaches, and rain forests. This week we visited Parque Nacional La Tigra, a cloud forest near Tegucigalpa (the capital city of Honduras) and a sustainable honey cooperative in San Lucia.

This is the summer season in Honduras, and most places we have visited have been hot and dry with temperatures ranging from the mid 80s to lower 90s. It was so refreshing to visit the moist, dense mountain forest with towering trees covered with ubiquitous vines and mosses and tropical ferns and lush plants covering the forest floor. The forest was magical. We spent half a day hiking along trails snaking their way through some of the most biodiverse habitat in the world. Although the cloud forests of Costa Rica and Guatamala receive more publicity, Honduras has conserved considerably more virgin cloud forest than either of these countries.

Parque Nacional La Tigra is probably the most visited cloud forest in Honduras because of its closeness to the city of Tegucigalpa. The cloud forest in La Tigra is not the most prestine, having been logged earlier in the 20th century, but a sizeable dense forest has returned along with 200 species of birds, a variety of mammals, and a rich variety of reptiles and insects. I couldn´t help but marvel how fast, when given a chance, nature will heal herself and re-create a rich biodiverse balance of life.

As we walked along the trails, we saw large six-foot-diameter tree trunks partially decaying, forming new soil - the placenta of life for a new generation of trees, tropical plants, insects, and a variety of animals that call this national park home. Walking through this cloud forest gave me a sense of wonder about the incredible diversity of life with which we share this planet. I could see so clearly how everything in this forest was interconnected and interdependent. I was reminded of what John Muir said; ¨When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.¨ I was filled with a desire to learn more about the diversity of life on our planet and to live a life that respects the rights of all species to coexist with us.

After our trek in the cloud forest, we visited Concepcion, a Honduran artist and farmer who is president of a bee association promoting sustainable honey production. Heifer International has helped fund micro-businesses that help local farmers to establish honey production operations using stingless and African bees. Promotion of these small micro-businesses has grown into an association of over 20 local honey harvesters in the beautiful town of San Lucia. The honey produced is used for personal consumption, for sale in local markets, and for sale for tourists. The income from the sale of honey helps supplement farmers´income with an environmentally and economically sustainable product. The stingless bees were particularly interesting: much smaller and easier to work with than traditional bees. We got to open up the bee box and watch their honey-making operation up close and personal. This project is one small example of how Heifer International is building the capacity of local people to help themselves - to achieve economic sustainablity in a way that is also good for the environment.

Dana: We visited a town called Conception de Maria and were fortunate enough to help with a project building a well. While working, someone said that the community had been digging the well for 8 years. EIGHT YEARS!!! I looked at a boy standing beside me and realized that this project had been happening his whole life. Now that´s perspective! Those 8 years would not have been possible if it weren´t for all the people in the community helping each other. With loved ones, nothing is impossible.That day I realized this: Strength through love is the essence of sustainability through community.