Project Description
Climate Resilience
Building climate resilience through seed saving, soil conservation, water restoration, and local leadership.
The Garden’s Edge has been working since 2019 with the communities of Chixolop and Las Minas, to address the impacts of climate change. We’ve built two sand dams, numerous household grey water filtration systems, and we’ve planted over 4,000 trees.
In October 2022, heavy rains filled both dams with sand to the top of the wall. This will allow us to raise the wall to its final height, about 9 feet, and to collect more sand and more water.
With these two projects successfully built and delivering filtered water to 570 households, the communities are now embracing other aspects of water conservation, including a community-based watershed protection program in the village schools.
The Sand Dam is a great example of a community-driven, holistic initiative that address complex environmental and social problems in ways that strengthen local leadership, and create intergenerational learning opportunities around watershed management.
Picture: Josue digs a hole to show how high the water table is three months into the dry season.
Through our Campesino a Campesino, “farmer to farmer” approach to community development, we’re building local capacity to organize around water scarcity, reforest watersheds, and protect precious topsoil from erosion.
Increasing Access to Water
Sand dams hold water subterraneously between grains of sand, that get caught behind the wall. This reduces evaporation and surface contamination and the sand acts as a natural filter. Local high school students helped establish a tree nursery to reforest the micro-watershed above the sand dam.