Acronyms are a girl's best friend

So I guess normally the title phrase would have the word Diamonds, but I've never actually had any of those in my life.  But as a military brat, there's always a chance that baby's first word will actually be an acronym, and even though my life is no longer that of a child (*insert semi sad face because taxes...grrrr) or of a military affiliate, there are still a lot of important acronyms in it.

Obviously, YASC is a popular one. I added into my autocorrect ages ago because of how often I use it. And during my experience with YASC, I've learned another acronym. ABCD (Asset Based Community Developement) is a model implemented around the world by Episcopal Relief and Development and encouraged to be the primary option for community development programs involving YASCers as well.  Part of our training and preparation for our missions this year included training on ABCD.  There are several mentions of it on blogs of other YASCers whose placement heavily includes ABCD.

In my placement, this has been a bit tricky, because of my objectives and the existing situation.  The goal of ABCD is to use existing resources and opportunities to create sustainable projects and improvements without the need for much from outside the community.  But here, with the CSA (hey, look! Another acronym! This one is the Portuguese acronym for the Anglican Social Center where I work) my resources include a building (which I'm quite grateful for as I'm writing this in the middle of the rainy season), a modicum of school supplies (that aren't mine), and a whole lot of kids.  So I really struggled with how to make progress under the ABCD model without crossing a line into child labor (not only morally questionable, but highly unlikely...when was the last time dozens of kids all did what YOU wanted? *side note, if this is actually a recent reality for you, please contact me now and teach me your secrets!).

But it wasn't at all difficult to evaluate how I can use ABCD myself, and use that to contribute to my house, my friends, and the center. So here's the list of what I started with:

1. A newly furnished house = lots of boxes and packaging that everything came in
2. Grocery and shopping bags...by. the. millions. (anyone else out there have a bag of bags in their house???)
3. Trees behind my house that produce fruit I've rarely if ever seen before, don't know much about how to cook and use, and can't eat fast enough to keep up with how fast they drop and start rotting on the ground.
4. No car. aka an empty garage that is covered and secure while still getting a strong amount of afternoon sunlight (except when it's raining)
5. Really awesome neighbors who helped me get rid of a large wasps' nest when I was terrified of the allergic reaction to getting stung.
6. A LOT of rocky orange dirt (which is often currently in mud form)
7. A very particular set of skills--skill that make me a nightmare for people--wait, I'm not Liam Neeson. Nevermind. I do have some skills, though.
8. English as a primary language
9. Internet

So from all those things, I now have two ABCD projects and some really dirty shoes...cause I don't have any ideas on what to do about the muddy orange dirt. The following is my current process:

Step 1: Give away as much ripe fruit as possible to neighbors and friends.

Plarn in the making

Step 2: Set up composting bins in the garage.  Use paper scraps, food scraps, fruit from the trees that didn't get picked in time, leaves, paper towels, and all non-coated cardboard to start making dirt that isn't orange!

Step 3: Use the plastic grocery bags to make plarn (plastic yarn) which, when added to my mad crocheting skills turns it into bigger and more durable tote bags for groceries, supplies, and whatever else.  Also, use plastic coated cardboard cut to size to increase the strength and flatness of the bottom of these bags.

Step 4: Give reusable bags (preferably filled with more tree fruit) away to friends in exchange for their hoard of plastic bags to use in making more.

Step 5: Wait a few months for the compost to dirt-ify

Step 6: Get some suitable seeds
Step 7: Sprout and plant seeds in temporary self-watering homes made from old Coke bottles using compost.

The main use here for grocery bags is as trash bags, so by reducing the amount of trash by composting, I need less trash bags, so I can use them to make better bags to carry more produce which helps feed me AND the compost bin! 

And there are other non-cyclical uses for things as well.  Like pieces of plastic coated cardboard can be cut to shape, folded, and secured with a little tape to use as tabletop easels for kid art projects.  And I'll be using the packing bubble wrap over the windows in my classroom once the air conditioner is installed because they act as decent insulation to help the AC keep the computers cool more efficiently (also, some sheets of bubble wrap will be kept for teacher staff meetings for use as stress relief). 

If you're wondering where items 8 and 9 come in to play here, the answer is: everywhere.  Because I didn't know how to make my own compost system, and I certainly didn't have the instructions for making plarn or the bag pattern memorized.  But, unfairly enough, the internet is full of just about everything you could want...if you speak English.  The reality is that, while there are obviously sites in and for other languages, there is nowhere near the volume, breadth, and depth of options for google.com.br as there is for English results. So if the thing you want to do exists, you can do it in English.  But, as in my case with the computer course, if you want to do it in, for example, Portuguese, get ready to translate EVERYTHING.  

So the moral of the story is that I LOVE ABCD (and ACDC too, but that's another story), and for no reason more than that I find that my use of it helps re-humble me to the realities of my privilege.

*This was a post I had written a while back but hadn't yet gotten the picture for.  If you didn't know, it is no longer the rainy season in central Brazil, but there isn't a lot different in terms of these projects as decomposition takes a while*