A Change Will Do You Good

In February, Chris Patterson could be found sitting at his desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writing grant proposals, or talking via Skype to regional staff in Latin America, or using Google Earth to evaluate a new, potential project site -- or perhaps doing all three at once. Now his daily experience is rather different.

Currently, Chris is half way through a four month stay in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, working out of EcoLogic’s regional office there. He is gaining valuable insights into the lives of the people he used to only speak with through a computer, and the forests he formerly only saw in photographs and satellite images.

In the next two months, Chris will visit EcoLogic project sites in the Sartsoon region of Belize, as well as Totonicapan and Huehuetenango in the Guatemalan highlands. He’ll be talking to community leaders from our partner organizations and farmers and fisherfolk who are now using more sustainable production methods.

“There are a lot of individual stories behind what we do, and I’m trying to understand Greenhouses some of them. Talking to the families we work with is what I find most rewarding about this job,” explains Chris. “I want to see how lives are changing because of what EcoLogic does.”

Chris admits he has a love for examining the complexity of an issue, however, when writing a proposal he looks for answers to simple questions. “What are the challenges in your community? How is what we’re doing impacting your ability to get clean drinking water or your ability to think beyond putting food on the table for the next meal?”

Through blog posts, Chris now documents his experiences. In a recent post titled, “Yes We Can-ton,” Chris wrote about gaining a deeper understanding one of our partners, the Association of the 48 Cantones in Guatemala, through a conversation with native Maya Quiche and EcoLogic program officer Francisco Tzul:

“According to Francisco, the Association of the 48 Cantones is the most powerful indigenous quasi-governmental structure left in Guatemala. It is over 800 years old. What an accomplishment for them, and what an honor for us to work with them.”

A native of Houston, Texas, Chris moved to Boston to earn a master’s degree in International Development and Social Change at Clark University where he was a Fellow in Clark’s Difficult Dialogues Program.

Chris came to EcoLogic with a background in community-building and is no stranger to the problems of the world’s poor. He has worked among the rural poor in Latin America, volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in Botswana and has spent time in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

Chris points out, “In order for rural people to have decent lives, you need to conserve the environment. In order to conserve the environment, you have to protect people’s lives. It’s one and the same.”

Special thanks to contributing writer Susan Boni.