My name is Pedro Xol and I am fifty-three years old. I have been working with SHI-Belize field trainer, Herminio Sho, in my community of Sundaywood for about three years. Last year, my wife started a little shop in our home selling chips and juice. Since I am now too old to work hard on our farm like I used to, I told Herminio that I would like to make our shop bigger. If the shop was bigger, we could make more money so we could send our children to school, feed them properly and repair our old home. Herminio said that SHI-Belize has a program that lends money, and he would talk to the person in charge of it. About a week later, he came with a micro-loan application and asked us questions about our family and business experience. Later in the week, Herminio returned with Yasmin Ramirez, the SHI-Belize Business Coordinator. Yasmin asked a lot of questions to help us write a business plan.
EXHIBIT: "In Sight and Mind: A Photographic Collaboration with Women of Rural Panama”
Delaware, OH and Surry, ME - April 2, 2012 - Every day around the world, women face personal and social constraints that are generally communicated through words, cultural practices, individual actions and institutional policies. All too often their daily lives go unnoticed and undocumented.
Student and faculty representatives from Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) traveled to Panama to visit the field programs of Sustainable Harvest International (SHI), a non-profit whose mission is to provide farming families in Central America with the training and tools to preserve our planet's tropical forests while overcoming poverty. For one week, OWU representatives interviewed and photographed rural women farmers working with SHI. They taught the women to use point-and-shoot cameras to take photos that documented their daily lives. Upon returning to campus, the OWU group used their photographs and those taken by the women to create a photographic exhibition. The exhibit provides a voice to the women farmers and forever documents the life stories of women currently living in San Pedro and Tranquilla, Panama who strive for ecological and sustainable living.
This moving and inspiring exhibit, entitled In Sight and Mind: A Photographic Collaboration with Women of Rural Panama, opens at Gallery 2001 in the Beeghly Library on the Ohio Wesleyan Campus on Thursday, April 12 at 4pm. The Founder and President of Sustainable Harvest International, Florence Reed, will attend the event and speak at 4:10pm. The six OWU students and faculty that traveled to Panama and created this exhibit will also be in attendance at the opening. The exhibit will remain up at 2001 Gallery through May 20, 2012.
Thanks to a generous grant provided by OWU, the full exhibit will be donated to Sustainable Harvest International upon the end of the academic year. The exhibit will then be scheduled to travel to galleries across the U.S.
INTERVIEWS WELCOMED. Florence Reed, OWU faculty and participant students are available for interviews leading up to the exhibit opening. They are available by phone any time at 207-669-8254 or in person Wednesday, April 11 or Thursday, April 12.
Photo: Maria Luisa Rodriguez of Ricon Claro, Panama, 2011 by Paula Masters Travis ’91
About Sustainable Harvest International
Sustainable Harvest International has worked with families in rural farming communities in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama since 1997. Using organic vegetable gardens, wood-conserving stoves, biogas digesters and a host of other projects, SHI's local field trainers work together with families, individuals and communities to preserve our planet's tropical forests while overcoming poverty. 877 active participant families and 562 graduate families in over 100 rural communities successfully planted 2,961,530 trees since SHI's founding in 1997. For more information, visit www.sustainableharvest.org.
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"SHI is our favorite organization to support. They are well run and have a grounded, workable knowledge of what can be done to help improve the lives of those they serve. In fact they serve us all. The impact of their work affects not only farmers in Central America, but also their families, communities, countries, and ultimately it plays it's part in the sustainability of our global ecosystem. SHI thinks globally, acts locally. Their hearts are in the right place. Please support them if you can." 
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