As of December 8, 2019, when the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Guayaquil, we could see that we were not operational to overcome the raging epidemic, because we did not yet know the weakness of the adversary but to survive these sometimes fatal attacks we have for months been the test of our human capacity.
Human beings have been distinguished from primates since the first buried their dead. What about the people of Guayaquil who had to abandon their people on the pavement of the city in the midst of an epidemic, when solidarity and respect for others were essential to their survival. We do not think that a mea culpa from the few corrupt and incompetent officials will be enough for them to regain their human dignity.
Fifty years ago it was only at the start of a new era now real thanks to our technology of the communication society, when Henry LABORIT researcher, scientist, at the origin of the discovery of DNA already proposed to replace the three pillars of the republic: Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood through Consciousness, Knowledge, Creativity.
Consciousness of oneself and one's environment now prevails over Freedom, which has become too abstract a concept. Access to knowledge thanks to new technologies is an essential tool for equal opportunities for citizens of the future. Creation has always been a place of resistance under any regime by giving immortal (ao) works in the course of human history.
Ten years ago, the Factoría project was born on its own to put into practice the concepts developed above. With local craftsmen, trained (supervised) by us, we built the infrastructure to accommodate trainees. We gave life to the project with funds from different universities to maintain links with the Community (name it ???). Today, due to the health, economic and educational crises, these funds are exhausted. To remedy this, we have developed a project, here is a summary.
La Factoría was built on land surrounded by hills and far from the city lights, which allows you to enjoy the night sky intense, deep and starry. The climate is mild, the vegetation green all year round. Located near an ecological reserve, the Factoria benefits from well-preserved biodiversity and fauna
The project
La Factoría has developed, with the collaboration of various universities and local artisans, for ten years, training courses in the fields of design, architecture and craftsmanship, while respecting its environment. Today we would like to expand training in the area of organic farming and healthy living.
We make our land available to families who do not have it, by creating an ecological and sustainable agricultural cooperative. The land will also be used for practical work by local students aged 15 to 18 through organic farming workshops.
In surrounding populations, with very high early mortality due to, among other things, poor eating habits, training young people in a healthy lifestyle is essential. We also provide them with our training and reception infrastructure
Physical distance is guaranteed at La Factoría. In a space of one hectare which welcomes a maximum of 10 students per session, the different working groups will easily comply with the recently imposed health rules.
Student training is integrated into existing national school and university curricula.
What will we do with your participation
Free internships. During the year and twice a month, we will receive for different training groups of ten trainees aged fifteen to twenty-five, we hope to reach about two hundred local and urban students.
Local students will participate in internships with practical work in the field of organic farming, lifestyle, health, design and craft culture.
Students from the cities will come from various faculties to develop basic projects required by neighboring municipalities. They will benefit from the help of teachers who will accompany them until projects are carried out through rural community link programs.
The participation of all students will be subject to a motivation letter which will determine the chosen workshop and to the commitment to transmit the experiences acquired to their comrades.
The practices of dynamic learning
La Factoría offers collaboration rather than competition, fostering camaraderie between interns aged 15 to 25, and very beneficial for the integration of their projects in rural areas as well as for their professional future. Organizing meetings to synergize the different skills in a collective creation that meets the real needs of the municipalities is the role of the Factoria. Creating dreams or desires to sell products is not the main purpose of human creativity. It must always respond to an individual or common need.
We practice meetings of intercultural human creativity without forgetting that culture is a word of the city and that outside the urban world, we speak of tradition, know-how and transmission. It is in this space and its language that we want to integrate the academic programs through links in rural areas, which perpetuates the memory of hands and the exchange of knowledge.
The observations
To succeed in education, we favor the emotional over the intellectual. We demand that the trainees propose a project, we ask them for a story, a story that reveals their emotional side.
To avoid failure in training, we seek to transmit the gesture so that the students understand why (us)? have to learn. How they will learn, they already know. Good management cannot be seen when it is right. We have to be factual and flexible with people.
Flexibility and versatility require us, first of all, to develop a fraternity of companions, where knowing BEING takes precedence over knowing DO, we seek together to constantly redefine the objectives and win the business.
The environment of the Factoria guarantees us one more good: silence. One of the worst pollutions of modern times is noise pollution. Excellence requires silence. The voice must be heard without amplification to be understood. We will have to ensure a circulation of speech in full action, to be in excellence. Without forgetting that silence is also the place of inaction, where poetry is born for our next actions
Putting yourself at the level of everyone would be demagoguery, but raising skills to excellence in knowledge, while respecting the time each needs for their project, is the pedagogy of experience between responsible people who commit to collaborate.
The goal of the project is to achieve self-sufficiency in three years.
By developing organic crops on more than two hectares, we hope to produce a surplus of fruit and vegetables for sale.
By developing cultural initiatives through artistic landscape projects supported by an annual festival to be held in the triangle of the villages of Valdivia, Olón and Dos Mangas. Once the economic situation of the country and the world has stabilized, we hope that the Universities budget will once again finance the internships of their students, which are obligatory within the framework of their programs.
With the collaboration of the inhabitants, one of the objectives will be to create exhibition places, in the hope of reviving ecotourism and thus reactivating the installations existing in the communes.
We hope that regular tourism on the coast will resume and that our available infrastructure outside of the internships will be occupied again as before.
Thanks to the sales of new products, see furniture developed with artisans from surrounding communities, we hope to continue to train local people in the field of lifestyle.
Your commitment of three years for the sum of two hundred seventy five dollars per year will allow us to continue our project from September.
