Happy Easter and Passover to all!
Last week, Runa hosted a Día de Campo or Field Day to show local communities, organizations, and government officials what we do and the advances we have made.
Just to quickly explain, Runatarpuna is the guayusa production, processing and export business here in Ecuador. Fundación Runa works on projects with indigenous communities and does research on the production of guayusa. These two entities form part of the social enterprise, Runa.
Here we are setting up the Fundación Runa tent before the Día de Campo:
Runatarpuna's General Manager, Francisco Mantilla and Fundación Runa's Executive Director, Eliot Logan-Hines gave presentations on business and research advances respectively:
The Prefecto of Napo Province, Sergio Enrique Chacón Padilla, was also in attendance, so he said a few words:
The guests then broke into groups and visited tents and processing plant where the Runatarpuna field team, factory staff, and Fundación Runa employees and volunteers explained advances in the production and processing of Guayusa and social and environmental projects.
Volunteers, Welcome and Lindsay, explaining the mapping project and community needs assessments that they have worked on with Fundación Runa.
Field technicians, Angel, Silverio and Elisa at their tent explaining how to take cuttings from guayusa trees and plant new plants.
Manolo, the factory manager, and a factory staff member explaining the guayusa processing.
After the guests visited all the tents, we went to Silverio's chacra or farm where he explained how he plants guayusa with other crops, like cacao, in an agroforestry system and the pruning methods that he is experimenting with.
Finally, we came back to Runa's farm, ate lunch and watched a traditional Kichwa dance performance.
I hope you all have a wonderful day! I will post later this week about my weekend in the mountains with friends.
Love,
Aliana
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