Yard designs in team members' homes.

This past week I (Mark) started initiating the same process in Batey 7 that I have been following in Haiti with yard garden participants. Working with members of the team responsible for the clinic yard garden, we did a yard evaluation (50 points possible) then registered each person and finally, created a yard design showing the changes the participant and his family want to make.

The process takes time and we have some team members on vacation in Santo Domingo. We got four people registered and evaluated, but only three designs done.

A group of youth from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina will be working with the youth from Batey 7 starting June 22nd, God spare life, to help them begin transforming their yards.

Here are the three designs we finished yesterday. Everything in red represents the changes that the family wants to make. Round circles in straight lines generally indicate where they will set up vegetable tires on benches. Long rectangles represent vegetable beds. The ones marked "moringa" will be planted to Moringa oleifera.

Yard design of Rubio and Clinton Paredes. The area to the left represents the changes for which Clinton and Rubio will be responsible. The set of circles to the far right represent fruit trees, vegetables and medicinal plants that the parents of Clinton & Rubio have already planted. The drainage that is a serious health issue for the batey lies directly behind the Paredes house. Clinton and Rubio made 22 points out of 50.

Yard design of José Aquino. José is the coordinator of the clinic yard garden team. His goal is to create a space in his yard that has some of everything that is in the clinic yard garden. José has nothing growing in his yard right now, so he made only 5 points out of 50 on his evaluation.

Yard design of Brayan Dotel. Brayan is one of the first people who helped get the yard garden started in the clinic. Then because of school and other factors, he dropped out. José has gotten him interested again and when we went to visit Brayan's yard, he had already cleaned out the area, prepared the soil and begun planting plantain rhizomes ("platanos" in the design). Brayan has separated the area with dirt walls in order to irrigate the space. Brayan made around 11 points on his yard evaluation.