The first is the CULTURAL CENTER EL PUNGU, located in Barrio Las Casas (20 minutes from Yanapuma). This is a communal space for residents and youth, where they have workshops in: Permaculture, Agro ecology, Ecotourism, and classes in yoga, cooking and nutrition for older adults.  El Pungu includes a vegetable and fruit garden, a garden for medicinal plants, and composting beds that are all organic and sustainable to educate youth that visit the center from schools and high schools. There is also a communal space where weekly they have a market of organic fruits and vegetables, as well as products from organic farms, to promote fair trade and healthy nutrition.
The second is the COMMUNITY INTERCULTURAL EDUCATIVE CENTER YACHAY WASI in the south of Quito. There they educate young students, most of whom are children of indigenous migrants from around the country, to combine the knowledge of their original towns with current modern knowledge—for this reason they don’t only have regular classes in languages, art, physical education, music and theater; the school has a plot of land where they plant and grow organic fruits and vegetables as well as medicinal plants. This school garden is used to teach the students about sustainable agriculture.

The idea behind this project is that volunteers start at El Pungu community center to learn and work in a variety of areas: work in the organic gardens, help with school groups to guide and teach about the organic gardens and crops, help with the classes in yoga or nutrition in the mornings to adults, work with community youth in the gardens, help at the weekly market and selling of the community products, and give workshops or themed lectures on other subjects in which the volunteer has knowledge. Then, after being properly trained at El Pungu, volunteers are welcome to work in the Educative Center Yachay Wasi to teach what they have learned, or in the Runakawsai project in Puerto Quito.

One month, but three months preferred to be trained to teach in the community center and school

Volunteers don’t need outside experience in organic farming, permaculture, local crops, or sustainable development. But the foundation asks that you come in willing to learn and work in a team first to be trained and then to teach.

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