Our youngsters as labor force in local agriculture

THE VISIT

We have had a special group to visit this week: A group of youngsters working at the strawberry production fields located at only 20 km average from the mountains of the “Sierra Chincua” Sanctuary, deciding to look for a job opportunity quitting their high-school level studies. Teacher Juanita Orta from Aporo town asked whether the Symbolic Migration could come and give the presentation on our topic “The benefits of trees” to them, since at hiring themselves to such activity, they ignore the damage of the strawberry production, which similar to the avocado production, require of high amounts of water from our mountains, and high amounts of pesticides too; “We decided not to attend school anymore, since very few of us would be able to continue University level studies later on” —one of the girls, Gisela, commented—. “Now with the situation of the Covid-19, we would not be able to attend our classes online at home; there is no signal connection in our villages; what’s app communication is very expensive through credit charging; it makes no sense; we need our teachers with us”, —A boy in the class added—. The salary this group of youngsters receive is an average of 60 (sixty) dollars per week, working 5.5 days a week. Letting this youngsters know of the importance of the ancestral trees in our mountains providing us with water, food, flora in general to the whole region and a whole equilibrium in our local ecosystem, necessary for all of our living activities was extremely important, “our forest areas, through condensation, are bringing the rain from the oceans even to the farthest regions inland; it is base that our mountain chains keep their native trees forming large forests chains in order not to break the attraction process of rain production putting in between large extensions of agricultural spots”, —Estela explained much further in detail at the moment to them assisting herself with the “Arboles” and “Escucha Hablar a los Arboles.” books, donated by the Monarch Butterfly Fund. These boys and girls said they have never experienced a tree reforestation program at all in the summer at the Monarchs’ overwintering spots; they could realize, through our short time together, how important it is, within possible, to make much more profitable to keep this prominent productive areas of land with avocados and strawberries clearly limited in extension, and our forest spots both up in the mountains, hill-sides and even flat lands, with our ancestral trees nucleus as intact as possible, before turning them into agricultural areas to grow products that might not even be originally native to our region and that could be consuming large amounts of pure water from our mountains, as well as needing considerable quantities of chemical pesticides to speed up their production process, finally contributing, besides, to the interruption of rain in our region, which we have so sadly been witnessing. Estela and teacher Juanita also took advantage of the time with this group to let them know of the way plastic consumption is damaging our environment. “I would have never imagined that my water bottle or a plastic bag could take hundreds of years to decompose in the ground”, “our oceans are receiving most of these garbage, we have seen on TV how animals in the sea appear dead having eaten a plastic cord or a bottle”; “batteries for electronics… oh, we could have never imagined how poisoning to the ground and the water they could be”… —were the reflections of this group of youngsters who were finally invited to consider the possibility to come back to their studies as soon as possible, having the great news of the University on Agro-nutritional processes in our area now, having got themselves the great advantage of experiencing a job and many reality angles of our local living, which shall give them a totally different perspective into their own future. 2-3 in the group reminded having received a Symbolic Monarch long ago, when they were children and the program would have got Ambassador Monarchs enough to reach their school. “Wow!, I would have never imagined receiving my Symbolic Monarch once again years later!. How beautiful”; “it feels like making a promise in our hands once we receive it, of becoming much more better citizens, for Monarchs, for ourselves, but for our town and country. and for making a better world”…