A Helping Hand
Students, alumna team up to provide clean water in Guatemala
by Bill Sulon
January 26, 2010
Students on a recent service trip to Guatemala pitch in to help wash dishes at the organic coffee farm owned by Christine T. Keilhauer Wilson '93. From left: Allison Hall '10, Nadine Drago '10, Annie Kondas (rear, Assistant Director of Campus Life), Peter Wright '12, David Torres '12, Fabio Cineas '12 and David Munn '10.Eighteen students and a sustainably minded alumna teamed up in Guatemala during winter break to distribute water filters to needy families and schools, pick coffee beans and mingle with 24 million worms.
Christine T. Keilhauer Wilson ’93 hosted the group at her organic coffee farm, Finca El Pintado, in Antigua, Guatemala, where she also makes water filters. It was the first time the international-studies major had hosted Dickinson students at her farm.
Dickinson students helped repair homes and delivered Ecofiltro water-filters to residents. The filters, made of clay, sawdust and coated with anti-bacterial colloidal silver, reduce the incidence of water-borne ailments by more than 50 percent, according to research at several universities. The farm produces 2,500 filters a month. (Wilson said 2,000 filters will be sent to Haiti).
Students also gained an understanding of organic coffee cultivation. The coffee beans, grown in the rich volcanic soil of Antigua’s Panchoy Valley at 5,000 feet, are hand-picked, washed with pure well water and dried under the sun. The farm has five employees. During the coffee-picking season—currently under way—the farm contracts with 25 local workers, mainly indigenous women, whose wages are complemented with food supplies.
‘Educational and humbling’
“It’s been one of the most rewarding trips I’ve ever been on,” David Munn ’10, a policy-management and American-studies major from Keene, N.H., said in a phone interview from Wilson’s farm. “It’s been educational and humbling.”
The students contributed money toward the purchase of 50 filters and brought along toothbrushes, toothpaste and other everyday items to donate to needy residents.
“We helped put up roofing on one structure and did odd jobs,” said Catherine David ’11, an environmental-studies and international-studies major from Lower Gwynedd, Pa. “When we got to the farm, we learned about the sustainable, organic coffee-making process.”
Part of the process includes the circle-of-life digestive services of 24 million worms, consumers of waste products at the farm and producers of exceptional fertilizer.
“I’d never seen so many worms before,” David said with a laugh.
The trip came about last year, when Wilson met with Mira Hewlett, interim director of religious life and community service. Hewlett, one of three administrators who went on the humanitarian trip, heard about Wilson’s water-filter project and coffee farm from Mark Ruhl ’70, Glenn E. and Mary L. Todd Professor of Political Science, who visited the alumna several years ago.
Liberal-arts values
“I thought it would be interesting for the Dickinson students to see how one can apply a liberal-arts education,” Wilson said. “This is especially important today as there is a lot of change in the marketplace. I also thought they could learn from the social-entrepreneurship model which we follow—growing businesses that not only yield a profit but help others.”
Wilson said sustainability is “the core value behind everything we do.” She started running the farm 10 years ago and gradually made the transition from conventional to organic farming practices.
“I like to refer to what we try to achieve with our farm and our water-filter project as sustainable quality,” Wilson said. “You need a quality product to sell well to provide the necessary income to develop social and environmental projects. Producing a quality product without caring about the social and environmental consequences will only work in the short term.”
The students returned to Carlisle Thursday and spent part of their weekend installing drywall at a house in Shippensburg.
“This year we tried to tie international service with local service,” Hewlett said. “We want to help the students realize that a trip like this is amazing but that we still need to find ways to help the local community as well.”
In addition to Munn and David, student participants were seniors Nadine Drago of Oakdale, N.Y., Pauline Hovy of Chappaqua, N.Y., Robert Smith of Baltimore, Amanda Crabbe of Staten Island, N.Y., Tyler Meade of Columbia, Md., Allison Hall of Denver, Colo.; juniors Kenya Dyer of Medford, N.Y., Kevin Trinchere of Bethlehem, Pa., Laura Romano of Norwalk, Conn.; sophomores Joshua Handelsman of Durham, N.H., Peter Wright of Denver, Colo., Jonathan Baez of the Bronx, N.Y., David Torres of Pacoima, Calif., Fabiola Cineas of Brooklyn, N.Y, Paige Hollenbeck of Rockville, Md.; and first-year student Leah Silver of Durham, N.C.