Week 34: Monday, April 15, 2024 – Sunday, April 21, 2024

Hello and Happy Earth Day!

Well folks, we did it. Yesterday, after a solid month of planning, ideating, and coordinating, Rayanne and I executed our first community event to celebrate El Día de la Tierra (Earth Day). And I can honestly say it went really well. Between Rayanne's creativity and my organizational skills, we pulled off an event that was engaging and interactive, with a little something for everyone. 

Despite the (much-needed) rain, more than 70 members of the community attended our event. The majority of the participants were elementary- and middle-school age students, but that actually ended up being a great audience for the activities we had planned.

The event was advertised to start at 3pm, but as we are in Mexico, people started to trickle in around 3:30/3:45pm as expected. As people showed up, they were directed to four tables in the back of the cancha (basketball court) to participate in different eco-crafts and environment-related activities.

At the first table, we had a station for painting and decorating plastic bottles to transform them into piggy banks, planters, or whatever other creation people's creativity took them in. The second table was dedicated to making ecobricks — 3L soda bottles filled with plastic bags, styrofoam, and any other soft materials that don't decompose naturally. The goal with the ecobricks is that at some point we can use them to build benches, tables, trash cans, and a number of other items that may be useful to have around the community. Making ecobricks is a great way to avoid sending plastic directly to the landfill and instead finding a creative new use for materials that can exist for thousands of years in the environment. At the third table, people could plant seeds in discarded yogurt cups. And at the fourth table, we had a number of eco-themed games for the kids to play. 

Perhaps you've picked up on the theme of our event or at least of the activities we planned. If you haven't, let me tell you what it is: plastic! In fact, the theme of Earth Day at an international level this year is "The Planet vs. Plastic." Plastic is such an important topic, as it is both a climate- and an environment-related problem and because plastic impacts every corner of the Earth.

When I say plastic is both a climate- and environment-related problem, what I mean is that plastic production is a huge contributor to climate change, based on what plastic is made out of and how it is made, as well as an environmental hazard, due to the significant volume of plastic that makes its way from our landfills into our waterways. If you're still unsure of the difference between the two, let me break it down for you. 

The companies that make plastics work in direct partnership with fossil fuel companies to both make the plastic as well as power their machinery. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, and in fact, many fossil fuel companies are the largest producers of plastic products. It's one way that fossil fuel companies are looking to continue extracting oil, coal, and gas in the future, even if we transition away from using them as energy sources. So plastic is a climate change-related problem because of the extraction of fossil fuels that are required to make them and the associated emissions that come from the combustion of fossil fuels. 

Plastic is also an environmental problem due to its longevity and the way it has made its way into communities and ecosystems all around the world. Plastic can take more than 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill. And plastic, even if it appears to degrade, does not disolve organically, meaning it continues to circulate in our water ways as micro- and nano-particulates, leading to organisms, including us humans, having plastic particulates in our bloodstream, which, while the direct health outcomes are still unknown, many scientists say could lead to significant health issues in the future.

All this to say, we need to work together as a global society to move away from using plastics — specifically single-use plastics. The goal of Earth Day 2024 is to reduce plastic consumption by 60% on a global level by the year 2040. This not an easy feat, but it is something entirely necessary, especially as we continue to learn about the impacts plastic has on our environment and on our bodies. 

So the theme of our Earth Day event in alignment with the international theme was plastic. How can we reduce our consumption of plastic and how can we find other uses for the plastic that we do use.

In addition to the crafts and workshops, our event featured a presentation by Rayanne and myself about our work in the community and the potential projects that we can bring to the community in the next year and a half. We also played a game of environment-themed trivia, which was sandwiched in between two dance performances by the girls (and one boy) of the casa de cultura (culture house). Rayanne was invited to dance with the kids — I was not because I was told I am too tall lol. But in exchange for dancing, Estella (the woman who runs the casa de cultura) made decorations for the event and hired people to run the audio and visual, which helped the event run smoothly.

We also invited volunteers from other sites in Querétaro to come to our event and talk a bit about their experience in their service. Katia, Cole, Jake, and Veronica — all volunteers from cohort 2022 — were so incredibly helpful with the running of the event and I am so grateful for everything the did while they were here. It was a short visit for them — coming in on Saturday afternoon and leaving early this morning — but they all expressed how happy they were to have had the chance to visit us in our cloud forest and I was equally as happy to have them come visit.

All in all, I'm very happy with how the event went. After our game of trivia and the final dance from the kids of the casa de cultura, we closed our event by playing The Lorax — a family-friendly movie with an environment theme, and a movie that all of the children loved.

I also want to give a shout out to my friend Sonia who has been an incredible ally in the community and someone I can always turn to if I need perspective on something pertaining to the community. She and her mom Teodora attended the event and helped with everything from set-up to sign-in and at the end Teodora brought all of the volunteers tamales to enjoy while the kids were watching the movie.

I know that service as a Peace Corps volunteer is not always easy. And I'm more than prepared for the challenges that service throws my way. But I do feel extremely lucky. Lucky to live in such a beautiful place. To be surrounded by such great people. And to have community support for the work I am doing and hope to do in the next year and a half.

Thank you all again for reading my weekly reports and for showing interest in my journey. 

Happy Earth Day, Pesach Sameach, and wishing you all a wonderful week!

Love,

Ilana