Training in self-sufficiency is primarily focused on the women of the Sierra Gorda. In addition to learning self-sufficiency skills, women are taught new job skills that will improve their living standards,
while respecting and protecting the environment. They are encouraged to diversify their economic activities, and they are taught to clean-up, protect and reinforce the health of natural resources.
Each month, continuous self-sufficiency training reaches 700 housewives, plus 17,000 children in 130 communities' schools. Training includes instruction on creating household orchards and vegetable gardens, the use of organic insecticides, and construction of 1,500 efficient, wood-conserving rural stoves that improve health in the home by venting smoke outside. The stoves burn 40 percent less wood, and are designed to be easily produced with local materials. An additional 40 rural stoves have been reconstructed, and 900 rural stoves are monitored for proper use.
More than 1,000 workshops have provided instruction on the benefits of organic cultivation and self sufficiency, whole food nutrition and cooking, fruit and vegetable drying, whole wheat baking, natural
medicine, rainwater collection, and the production of jams, preserves, beauty products, color dyes, and ceramics. Each of the women attending cooking classes contributes a food item.
Assistance is provided with the planting organic orchards, and vegetable and prickly pear cactus gardens. The program has supplied dehydrated soya flour, vegetable seeds, 1,500 fruit trees, 1,000 edible (nopal) cactus plants, and 20,000 ornamental trees. So far, 75 school and domestic vegetable gardens have been established, 352 families are benefiting from new vegetable gardens, and there is supervision of another 1,800 home and school vegetable gardens. Once a school garden is established, school children begin asking their teachers to bring seeds home to plant a home garden, diffusing the knowledge to the adult population.
Waste management
Improved solid waste management practices are a key part of the program, and include the establishment of materials recycling centers, installation of 350 compost-producing, dry latrines, organization of 40 school and community clean-up campaigns, and composting and separation of solid wastes for recycling, and
instruction in the proper use of latrines. Latrines are monitored for five years after they are installed to ensure that they are being used properly.
So far, recyclable solid waste is being separated in 130 communities, and there are 20 community-based recycling storage centers and one regional recyclable waste
storage center. Local communities provide the land and structure for the recycling centers, and determine their hours of operation. Materials are collected and separated for recycling in the local center. "You may see a lady with two sacks of glass, classified, tied to a donkey, walking two hours to take it to a recycling center," Ruiz said. The Sierra Gorda Ecology Group then transports the hundreds of tons of solid waste materials that have been collected to the regional recycling center, and then to Querétaro City for recycling.
