Small farmers in the hills of Honduras are improving their lives through seed saving and on-farm experimentation. Jen Moore reports.
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There’s a quiet killer living in the walls of traditional adobe houses in Central and South America. You can’t see it; you can’t hear it. It sneaks out at night, crawling or tumbling into your bed.
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In the 1940s and 50s, journalist Tom Patterson became convinced that Shakespeare could help revitalize his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. Today, Suchitoto, El Salvador hopes to begin a culturally-driven economic revitalization that will build on Tom Patterson’s legacy through a novel partnership with Stratford.
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By its very nature, water can only be successfully managed by consensus. It flows from one place to the next, often in a meandering way, blind to human demands and arbitrary boundaries. Conflicts often arise, smart solutions typically the exception, rather than the rule. Nowhere are water issues more a propos than in the landlocked South American nation of Bolivia.
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Rural-urban migration is a twentieth century phenomenon. Faced by numerous obstacles, poor farmers have always set off to the nearest big city in search of income. Opportunities are often a dream. Families break up, violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse are rampant … racism and discrimination too. In the end, migrants often forsake their most valuable card – their own traditions. GPM correspondent Jen Moore sends us this story, from the margins of a large Bolivian city.
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The development of rights for disabled people in industrialized countries like Canada, Germany, Japan and the U.S. is one of the more encouraging trends of the past twenty or thirty years – a sign of inclusiveness in this age of division and disparity. Imagine what it’s like to be a disabled person in a country like … Bolivia.
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Here’s another dispatch from Victoria Fenner, who spent an action and learning-filled three weeks in Central America earlier in the year. It’s hard to visit Central America and not explore the world of coffee, so here we go.
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If everyone on Earth earned what their labour was actually worth, global poverty would be a lot less rampant. Paying people what their labour is worth is what the so-called Fair Trade movement is all about. Victoria Fenner sends us philosophical musings on the subject from Guatemala about the personal ramifications of free trading.
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Of all the conflicts in Latin America, none was more brutal or costly in human lives than the forty-year civil war in Guatemala. Two hundred thousand people died, most of them impoverished peasants of Mayan ancestry. Today, former rebels are presenting their perspective of the struggle–to tourists.
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The slow-food movement has reached dizzying heights on the sun-baked altiplano of Bolivia, in the Andean highlands. Here, small-scale producers are making the most of scarce water supplies, ample sun, a few inexpensive materials and local expertise to eke out a living in some of the highest elevation farmland in the world.
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GPM producer Victoria Fenner has recently returned from a trip to Central America. In Honduras, she spent a few days on the side of a big mountain, gazing down on clouds soaked with rain. On the bottom of Panacam’s slopes farming communities depend on her fresh waters and are trying to keep them clean. Here’s Victoria’s story.
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What if — during our teen years — we each had to write a sex advice column?
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Three quarters of Earth’s surface is covered in water. Most of this vast mass of water is salty, a mere two percent or so fit to drink. Underground is where the planet’s purest waters lie. You’d think we’d conserve what’s so scarce and valuable. It isn’t always so. Bolivians are working hard to better manage their water – as Jen Moore reports.
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Stuart Franklin is turning air miles into trees. Franklin — the founder of a grassroots carbon offsetting project in Ecuador — calculates how many seedlings he has to put in the ground in order to generate a carbon bank big enough to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by tourists jetting to the popular Galapagos Islands each year.
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The city of Curitiba, in southern Brazil, is famous among urban planners for its innovation and rational development, with a reputation for being highly livable and very sustainable. It was one of the first cities to market itself as “green” in a 1980s advertising campaign. And it is.
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The next time you buy roses for your honey, consider this: The cut flowers in your Valentine’s bouquet were fumigated for insects and mildew, then drenched with preservatives for the long flight north. They may only make your lover sneeze – or perhaps break out in a rash – but the farmers who grow the flowers may suffer chronic poisoning. GPM producer Jen Moore sends us this report from Ecuador, a major exporter of cut flowers.
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Few industries provoke as much controversy as mining. When powerful companies seek out concessions in poor countries, communities rally around democratic institutions to defend their land and water. From the Andean mountains of Peru, Jen Moore brings us this story about how a democratic vote saved the day … perhaps.
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Isabel La Torre knew they’d finally hit upon the right idea when women’s participation in the Central Coffee Organization of Northwestern Peru (CECANOR) more than doubled in less than three years. For more than three decades, this vibrant Peruvian coffee marketer has been interested in addressing gender inequity on the farm. But after various attempts, putting a dollar value on women’s work is what has made a difference.
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