High Andean Greeting Cards and A New Greenhouse for Allpacruz

Yesterday, the Ascend Ecuador crew rumbled through the green hills outside of Cuenca to the small village of Allpacruz to continue work on projects designed to empower local residents and improve their quality of life.

Priscilla and Jimena took to the meeting house with a group of locals. They carried with them a cardboard box bulging with an assortment of stationary supplies, stamps, stencils, colored pencils, markers and glue; just about everything necessary to make a good mess.

While working together on their psychology thesis, the two hatched the idea of encouraging the villagers to create their own interpretations of holiday greeting cards. By selecting the most promising prototypes to reproduce for sale in the city, a profit can hopefully be gained that could be reinvested in Allpacruz in order to further Ascend's mission: benefiting the residents. While this was the first attempt to harness the power of Andean greeting card art, the excitement and creativity of the villagers left us all feeling optimistic.

While the artists created their homegrown versions of Father's Day cards, Mark (the Ascend Coordinator here in Cuenca) and I traversed a nearby hillside to check on the progress of a newly-built greenhouse, which will allow the locals to experiment with some new crops that wouldn't typically take well in the high Andean regions, specifically tomatoes. We have our work cut out for us: first we'll need to repair the cracked reservoir–thankfully situated uphill from the greenhouse–so we can move forward with the gravity-based irrigation system that we'll install next week.


As a new intern, I was inspired by the way the children rushed to Mark's feet to hug him as we exited the truck in the humble town square of Allpacruz. For the small children of the village, he represents opportunity; something different, change. Ascend is making a difference here, and this is something that I am proud to be a part of; I hope that any others aware of this reality will join our cause.

Stay tuned for next week's updates on our medical and dental campaign in the villages. Peace.

Allpacruz, Quingeo, Ecuador. May 2009. (Photos: Caleb Braley)