Los Limones: overview
The town of Los Limones, Monte Plata in the Dominican Republic is known for its agriculture and proximity to nature. The nearby conservation park Los Haitises is a vital habitat to the endangered Ridgway's Hawk that our partners at the Peregrine Fund have been working to protect since 2009. During our semester-long MIT class D-Lab: Development, we designed a workshop to advance the work from last year's visit. We focused on the main issues the community wanted to address and worked to develop the skills they believed would be helpful.
First workshop
We structured our first workshop to receive feedback and ideas from community members. We recapped what they had learned the year before and if they had applied any of their new skills to projects. What happened with the structures made the year before? What kind of issues or skills would they want to learn this year? From this conversation, three groups were formed: one to design chicken coops from locally available material, another for signage, and a group specifically focused on learning looming, crocheting, and knitting.
Chicken coop
The community is no stranger to the chicken coop issue. Chicken coops were proposed in order to help prevent Ridgeway’s hawks from hunting chicks, which would lead to people hunting the hawks.
Originally, the Peregrine Fund gifted cages, but they would often get sold, so we shifted focus to assisting the community to build their own chicken coops. Last year, the previous team showed the group how to make a yarn mesh for the chicken coop enclosure; however, it ended up not being as robust as needed. This year, we had the group build chicken coops out of locally sourced materials in conjunction with materials we brought. The group was very motivated to get a prototype finished and made two in two days! The first one consisted of reused wooden drawers with PVC supports and nylon thread. They also added a hinging door.
The second used PVC pipes and plastic mesh. Joining the corners of the PVC cage securely posed a slight challenge, but they devised a way by cutting parts from the ends of the PVC, which allowed them to be screwed together. The chicken coop turned out to be quite large. The group will now test their prototypes.
Kids co-design
The curriculum began with an egg drop challenge on the first day to spark the children’s interest in design thinking and encourage them to make use of local resources. All the groups came up with great designs using leaves and trash, and most drops were successful! More than 30 kids showed up to the first workshop because of the excitement, and it was quite difficult to get everyone’s attention. Nevertheless, it was so heartwarming to see how happy the kids were when they found out their eggs were intact. It was particularly valuable to see their abilities to make use of their local resources for this challenge, which built the foundation for our later workshops.
From Day 2 to Day 5, we started with general environmental education on the ecosystem and food chain and learned about plant growth. The kids each made their own plant using recycled plastic water bottles. Then, to help them internalize the knowledge with their local community, we did a plant/animal scavenger hunt within the town and had the kids place the items they found on the trophic pyramid.
One thing we realized was the kids LOVED competitions! To tie in the design component of D-Lab’s pedagogy with their competitive nature, we had a chicken coop and trash can design challenge using recycled materials and other constraints. They initially struggled to come up with original thoughts and constantly asked us for help. After we encouraged them and refused to provide any guidance, they slowly started to get their footing and came up with many creative designs! One group even made their coop into the shape of a pig!
All the kids are super genuine and kind! They have been giving us small gifts since the first day (e.g. fresh almond and guava from the tree, handmade bracelets, flowers, cute drawings, etc.). During our chats, a lot of them mentioned that they dream of traveling and seeing more of the world. We visited the local school as well and learned that only around 10% of students end up going to college every year due to financial and geographical constraints, and most of them stay in Los Limones their whole life and work locally. It led us to reflect on how we can empower the younger generation more through educational enrichment and explore other ways to support them with their dreams.
Looming, crocheting, and knitting
At our first workshop, we planned out some projects that we could work on: a volleyball net to replace the torn one at the school, a hammock, and a mat. We decided to start with loom knitting to continue on the work from last year’s group. The women built a simple loom using a wooden board with pencils as pegs, and the women iterated on the design, making additional looms with the pegs more spaced out for different projects that demanded more larger stitches, such as for knitting hammocks.
Looms with a variety of peg spacings
They managed to finish an entire volleyball net and a hammock!
Loom knitted hammock and volleyball net for school, Photo: [insert]
A lot of the women and kids were also interested in crocheting and knitting, so we showed them the basics of the two crafts. Many of the women and kids already knew how to crochet, so teaching crochet was very quick. Unfortunately due to limited time and materials, we were unable to show many people how to knit, but one of the ladies caught on quickly and learned how to knit and even perl!
Signs & waste management
In our initial workshop, after discussing the various issues they saw in the community, some community members brought up the idea to build signs across Los Limones to raise awareness about these issues. Soon, we organized workshops to go through the design process for signs with the group.
On the first day, we discussed what types of messages we wanted to have on the signs. Initially, many people were shy about engaging in the process, saying that they didn't know how to draw, or that they had bad handwriting—but as the group started getting more excited, the people who were initially shy started opening up and engaging in the design process, especially after seeing other community members they can relate to engage deeply in the design process.
On the second day, we started executing the plan, starting by cutting the wood pieces—initially, we led the process demonstrating the tools, but the group members quickly started taking the initiative, soon no longer needing our help. Some of the group members had experience and confidence working with tools from last year's workshop, but some of the newer participants were reluctant working with power tools, but as we engaged them more in working with the tools, and following the example of the others who were already confident with power tools, they soon gained confidence with the tools themselves. Additionally, some of us students who didn't already have experience with power tools also took this opportunity to learn, so the learning experience was shared between all of us. After cutting, we treated the wood, acting on the concerns that the group brought up that the wood might rot in the rain and other elements, leaving the pieces to cure overnight.
On the third day, we started assembling the treated pieces of wood, working with screws and nails. It played out similarly to the second day, with the group members initially very shy about using the hammers and drill, but soon opening up and gaining confidence. Soon, they finished assembling the signs with no additional direction given by us students. Another thing that we observed was that a few men who were hanging around started helping the women who were working in the group, but started playing a supporting role rather than taking over the assembly—in a community where men largely do tasks such as working with tools, and women are mostly relegated to a supporting role, this role reversal was a promising sign that we were doing something to help shift the local perception of women’s roles in the community.
At the end of the third day, they figured out how they were going to finalize the signs, starting off with pencil sketches, which they then soon started painting over at the start of the fourth day of workshops.
(Left blank for more paragraphs since the project isn’t complete).
As they were discussing the issues they wanted to tackle for the signs, they brought up the issue of waste management, which is a very visible problem in Los Limones and other rural communities in the Dominican Republic. In many places, throwing out waste on the roads, local environment, and other public places is very normalized. As we probed further, we found that while there was a will to resolve the trash issue, and that many people kept an effort to keep their homes tidy, there just wasn't an easy way to properly dispose of trash. The garbage truck comes once a week for the families on the main road, but semi-monthly for the families living off the main road, and garbage bags are hard to come by, with most people using plastic bags they get from stores, which are limited in trash capacity.
The signs group, with some prompting of the students, soon started thinking about creating a system to facilitate trash collection in the community, creating communal trash collection points/public trash cans in the community. (This is still ongoing).
Fumigation pole
Landing in Punta Cana, we saw the previous designs for fumigation poles by previous D-Lab classes and the Peregrine Fund and figured out the design improvements that could be made for each one. Soon, after learning about the design constraints from the Peregrine Fund (such as the height of the trees), we formulated a plan to create a pole to solve these issues—a very long telescoping pole, with a remotely-operated electric spray nozzle, camera, and light to fumigate the hawks’ nests.
Reflection and next steps
There were a few days where rain quite literally rained on our parade, and where we were struggling to keep the attention of the kids, but overall, the workshops went well. We were able to use the co-design process to together create things that are useful for the community and transfer the skills needed to independently make more. Together with the community, we were also able to design strategies to tackle systematic problems, such as access to tools and the waste management problem, which can hopefully be successfully implemented by the time the next D-Lab team comes.
More information
MIT D-Lab class D-Lab: Development
Contact
Libby Hsu, MIT D-Lab Associate Director of Academics