Gardens in my Community
The Cochabamba Tenants Organization (OINCO) was founded on March 16, 2007 in response to the need of a large segment of Cochabamba’s population to enjoy decent housing where their children can be raised in safe and healthy conditions.
During the past 9 years, OINCO has fought tirelessly to build a social-community housing project that would provide dignified housing to low-income families and would be based on collective land ownership, green technologies, and urban agriculture.
From 2012-2013, the Fundación Abril saw the need to start creating “here and now” the imagined community that OINCO is working toward, and to begin to develop skills within the community pertaining to recycling, water management, family urban farming, etc. In this sense, one of the most successful experiences was the construction of urban gardens, and the members of OINCO showed great interest in and enthusiasm for working the soil and growing vegetables.
The ‘Gardens in My Community’ Project began when the Fundación Abril convinced the Governor of Cochabamba to hand over to OINCO a neglected piece of land on the grounds of ExCordeco in downtown Cochabamba.
During the project implementation, OINCO managed to turn a junkyard on arable land that performs a social function food, regularly producing organic vegetables and applying technologies urban agriculture. Through community work and professional guide facilitators involved in these issues, the members and OINCO technically trained in agroecology also shook community ties in the organization, making these gardens in their meeting place. Finally, the OINCO, autonomous, self-managed and taking the initiative in their hands, has created the «School Agroecológica Popular» where experiments urban agriculture are made, compost is produced medium scale and experience is replicated in other neighborhoods.
