The day started really early for Cultural Brand team Theresa and Suvi, started at 6 am preparing the material they needed for their activities. After our last tasty and vast breakfast in Zoh-Laguna, decisions were made about the day’s activities. Gabo, Juan and Flynn decided to stay at the hostel to reflect on the proposal ‘EcoHostal’ and prepare their material for presentation. Alastair decided to follow the doctor’s advice and rest a bit, also at the hostel.
The rest of us left for 20 de Noviembre to make the last activities together with the community . While the CB team had a Workshop with the Artisans where they explored the symbolism of their work and the proposals that had been thought for the crafts business; Water team began making a prototype to present one of the proposals on the purification of water, the Rio Bec workshop opened its doors for them.
At noon, we had lunch at Leidi’s place, some delicious tamales with salsa “picosita” for us to take force for closing the projects. So, each team then went to work and prepare the final details for presenting the ideas more clearly.
The appointment time came and at 5pm the “comisaría” (also known as Green House between us) was full of familiar faces and curious children who came to know the results of so many questions and activities we had done with them during these days.
The session opened with a video made by Antti, about our days in the community, it was really nice to see how everybody laughed and enjoyed it without any language barrier.
Finally, the first project to present their results, was the Eco Hostel team. The guys spoke about the advantages they had found in “el 20” for the tourism and its proposal to build a reception which in turn had a community service. That way, different materials and construction methods would be explored, and it permit to boost the existing local initiatives about craftsmanship and tourist infrastructure (places to stay and places to eat) and it would provide a meeting place for the local young people.
The following turn was for the Cultural Brand girls, who showed prototypes of how a story could be told about the crafts so they could make clear the value of labor, materials and ideas that are reflected in their products. They also featured a Health Route, part of the exercise that the team made just to understand how the health care for the community works and how they could improve access to health for the artisans of 20 de Noviembre. Having a fair price and increase profits to begin a Health Fund, as well as exploring the possibility of voluntarily joining IMSS were the results of this project.
The Water team was the last to present, Isela and Ismo spoke of the different sources of water, the uses and users. Sharing the research process allowed them to know the actual practices of the community. Then they made reference to the bad and the good habits they learned, and finally they proposed the possibility of purifying water by UV rays for certain activities; the prototype they made exemplified a way of carrying out this practice with the materials available in the community.
Finally, the closing remarks by Claudia summarized how grateful we are for sharing the experience with the community and how much we appreciate their interest and support in our work.
So between farewells and goodbyes, we said ‘hasta pronto’ (see you soon) to the new friends and the starry nights in the jungle.
Action Lab Mexico 