In the 2018/2019 service year, the Rotary Club of Denton, Texas designed, developed, installed and documented four aquaponics gardens for rural women in Costa Rica (GG#1978399).
The purpose of these gardens is to provide green produce and tilapia breeding capabilities to rural communities for restaurants, local markets and as tourism/ "voluntourism" locations where there are food scarcity challenges.
The gardens were installed between May and July 2019. Instructions for installation, maintenance and operation were provided to the communities by the project team.
Since the initial installations, community feedback has identified more rural families that are interested in adopting the aquaponics method of gardening. In the community of Mollejones, some of the men who helped on the original project are interested in creating kits that individuals can build at their own homes and on their small farms to grow their own produce.
The purpose of this grant is to launch a business, with community leaders, that will purchase materials and assemble all parts needed to build a family sized aquaponics garden. Eventually, the business would be self supporting and offer the kits throughout the rural areas of Costa Rica.
All tools needed to create these kits were purchased through the previous grant and are available to use for cutting and assembly of the parts.
Each kit will have a value of approximately $300 - $400. Training on care of gardens purchased and built from a kit would be mandatory and community individuals would conduct the training in a "train the trainer" format supported by Rotarians with aquaponics construction and cultivation experience.
|