Vitalis Organic Seeds is proud to have contributed to the Fair Trade Committee initiative to develop a Community Center in Los Janos, Sonora Mexico in collaboration with organic grower Wholesum Harvest.
The Community Center is a place intended for educational gatherings in the local community where Wholesum Harvest has one of its farms. The Community Center was designed as a low impact building built with local materials in an effort to be sustainable as well as responsible.
Fair Trade’s mission is to ensure that workers are empowered to build their own communities and that they decide for themselves what the workers in their community need. All workers who contributed to the project elected a committee of twelve of their peers to guide the efforts over a period of three years. The elected committee then researches new projects based on worker input, and then implement and administrate those new and existing projects.
After significant planning, volunteerism and donation solicitation, the Community Center had its ribbon cutting in July. The Center was promptly inundated by a wave of eager children and some parents with 12 computers fired up in minutes before the crowd could be introduced to all that the Center has to offer. Several children were drawn to the reading table and poured over books in the collection. The Center plans to offer on-site and on-line educational programming.
The Community Center will be staffed by a young man named Misael Dórame Bojórquez who was a former farm kid of a Wholesum employee. Misael’s Father is a maintenance worker at Wholesum and Misael himself used to work summer and winter breaks at the farm. He studied at Universidad Estatal de Sonora in Magdalena on a scholarship from the Fair Trade Committee and grew up locally, so he is well connected to both the community and to the Fair Trade program. We wish Misael great success and satisfaction in his new role as a facilitator of learning in his community. While there are still a couple of small details to work out, the Center is now operational.
Vitalis is proud to be a supporter of such an inspirational and smile-inducing project and we thank Fair Trade and Wholesum Harvest for their valuable work to improve the quality of life of those in which our organic food system depends upon.
