Siempre Verde Project

Today we completed the absolute beasting of an old building on the property of Centro Buen Pastor in the hopes that it will soon provide for our new Siempre Verde office. Confused? You should be. But that's what I'm here in Starbuck's for. As I enjoy my Tazo I plan on cluing you all in, bit by bit.

We've taken in a lot of information over the last week and a half, and to explain it all would take me about 44 tazo teas' worth. Here goes. Myself, Jon Kearney, and Dan Frank (Danimal as he calls himself on Facebook) are all living in Santurce and working together on the city limits of Guaynabo. Surprisingly it's only about a 15-20 minute commute. 15 minutes if Jon or I drives and 20 minutes if Danimal drives.

Anyways, the organization we volunteer for is called the Puerto Rican Center for Social Concerns (PRCSC). 2 years ago we started a project they decided to call Siempre Verde (Always/Forever Green for those of you who are mono-lingual...if that's the right term for it?) in collaboration with a group called INCICO (Instituto para la Conservacion de Puerto Rico) and the Salesian Sisters who run the Centro Buen Pastor. This place is not only a retreat center capable of hosting grade school groups, families, etc.- but so much more. Like the breeding grounds of projects like Siempre Verde.

Let it absorb. Reread the above paragraph if you must.

The 4 focus areas of this project:
1. socio-economic
2. protection and conservation of natural resources
3. psychological effects of the ecosystem (studying the use nature as a means of therapy)
4. education and the training "nature guides" who are essentially young adults that have an opportunity to earn a job as a tour guide to take people through the nature trails of Centro Buen Pastor's 18 acres


Sooooo today we finished the gutting of a small building that we are hoping to completely renovate in one day with the help of $ and labor from United Way. I think this is going to happen sometime in early September.

Like I said, bit by bit. So that's enough for now. I'll try to mix in the entertaining stuff with the work information as best I can. For example, when I stepped down off the ladder today I felt an old, rusty nail slide through the rubber on my New Balance shoes directly into my foot. Yes, it hurt like a bia bia. Then I smacked a light fixture on the follow through with the sledgehammer and got some small glass shards in my eye. Then I stepped on the humble abode of the meanest, hardest-biting ants I've ever seen. A guy we work with told us that if you put a lizard on their ant home, they would eat him (or her if the unfortunate party is a female lizard) in a matter of minutes.

If you thought that last part was entertaining, that's just sick. And don't worry I'm getting a tetanus shot tomorrow, the glass shards are rinsed out, and I lived through the fury of those little biting ants.

Enjoy the video. Although Jon provides the dialogue and it's not as entertaining as mine, there's still a lot of good information and it allows you all to see some of the Centro Buen Pastor's property.