I received an email from Maddy Harland at Permaculture Magazine with the words “A job for Peel”.

A community in Guatemala had reached out to the magazine saying, children are malnourished, there is no food growing and lots of rubbish do you know anyone who could help?

I decided to stop off en route to Ecuador and give them a hand.

I witnessed a perfect growing area but with such a steep bank down it was impossible to access. Job one was to build steps down to this area.

Then we held an ecological sports day where the children would race and collect either rubbish or compost and then put it in the correct place (compost bin/ eco brick – empty plastic bottle) and from this we built the first eco brick bench,  – since then 3 more have been built.

Compost is the first step in growing food – so household compost bins were painted by the children. A shared community compost area was then constructed with educational signs regarding what to put in.

Since leaving I received a wonderful slideshow of all the food they had grown and other benches they had built.

I had shown how to make compost and turn their rubbish into something useful. Mission successful.