COATEPEQUE LAKE, El Salvador – The palms are swaying restlessly in the electric darkness, waiting for the storm to arrive. Lightning flashes over Santa Ana Volcano on the far side of the lake; just a few minutes ago I was walking along the shore with Elmer, catching the last bits of sunset over the lake.

He sensed the storm coming before I did. “Ya viene el agua,” he said. Literally, “Now the water is coming.” The timing couldn’t have been more perfect; rainy season notwithstanding, El Salvador gifted me with a blue sky my first full day in the country, perfect for visiting the pyramids of Tazumal and Casa Blanca, then catching a bus to this sparkling expanse of blue amid the volcanoes.

Yesterday, my first afternoon, the shower passed quickly to a glorious sunset over the gothic cathedral in Santa Ana’s central plaza, and I enjoyed the national symphony in Santa Ana’s spectacular theater before a short walk back to my hotel, La Libertad.

I left Guatemala City around 10 a.m. yesterday and arrived in Santa Ana, El Salvador’s second city, at around 2. The terminal was in the southwest part of the city and as I tried to get my bearings, a genial Salvadoran Archie Bunker type approached. “Taxi?”

It was hot and my pack was heavy. “Sure,” I said.

“Just a minute,” he rushed off and shortly pulled up with a yellow car, meticulously hand-painted with the word “Taxi” in black and red. The inside was just as quirky, with every square inch of the dashboard decorated with something – a Tasmanian devil, a leopard-skin cloth and coins from around the world.

Ismael was his name, and he was friendly and engaging, but not cheap. Our roundabout search for a hotel set me back $15. Getting used to the dollar again wasn’t going to be easy, I realized.

Ismael offered to take me to Lake Coatepeque for $75 – which he insisted was the going rate. Later I checked with another driver and it seemed to be true. So I decided to stick with public transport, and for less than a dollar, the ruins of Chalchuapa and this spectacular crater lake were mine.

Granted, the accommodations weren’t the most luxe – the hikes to the bus stops and the waits with my 40-pound pack being the biggest deterrent – but they weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. The routes were long and winding, but there were no chickens this time, and the buses here were not as cram-packed with humanity as the ones in Guatemala had been. In fact, after the Guatemalan chicken buses, they were downright comfortable.
The food service was excellent, with locals coming aboard to vend everything from fresh fruit to “yuquitas” – corn-wrapped yucca balls. And the stern-looking young man driving the bus down into Coatepeque, the same one that had wired his bus for maximum sound and was blasting Central American rap music when I boarded, surprised me by switching to a gentler tune as we approached the lake and stopping the bus every time I stood to shoot a photo.

At first I thought it was just because of the tumulos, the monstrous tubes of concrete that are used as speed bumps here. But after the fourth or fifth time, I glanced up into the rearview mirror and saw him looking at me. This serious young man was proud of his beautiful country, I realized, and he wanted me to capture it well.
The bus was full when I boarded, and most eyes were averted to avoid having to deal with me and my monster backpack. A young man with a friendly face smiled at me, and that was all I needed. “Here, let me help,” he said, and held my pack on his lap.

Manuel was his name, and he was 26. He was trying to figure out how to get back home to Honduras after being deported from Mexico. He’d been trying to make his way north, but his luck had been bad. He’d nearly drowned crossing the Rio Grande, and had been deported from Las Vegas and San Antonio. Now he had been deported to the border of El Salvador, penniless, a five-day walk from the Honduras border. His pantomime of the terrifying river crossing was comical, and he smiled through most of his story, as if he were talking about a movie with a happy ending.

Why didn’t he just stay home? I asked him.

“What will I do there? There are no jobs,” he said, and smiled his charming, little boy smile. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, I discovered, so I fished out my emergency stash of nuts from my backpack and handed them over. I paid his bus fare and found a $10 bill I could spare, and tucked it in his hand before he left.

The driver dropped me off right in front of Torre Molinos, the hotel I’d read about in the guidebook, and I was overjoyed at the prospect of a few hours of relaxation with a swimming pool and a lakeside view. The hotel has a decadent charm, and after a long run of backpacker-style hotels at $12 a night, I decided it was ok to splurge.

I ordered mojarra a la plancha, grilled tilapia, and was savoring the meal along with the sunset out on the balcony overlooking the lake, when Elmer, one of the employees, dropped by to make conversation.
America is the land of opportunity, he told me – that’s why an estimated 4 million Salvadorans live there, more than half the 7 million who live here. There’s just no opportunity here, he said.

“But you have a good job here at Torre Molina, no?” I asked, naively.

Elmer laughed and shook his head. “Six dollars a day,” he said. “For that I can rent a room. I can’t have a house. I can’t get married or have kids. Why would I want to bring children into the world when I can’t support them? Why would I want to marry a woman and make her miserable?”

“Oh, that’s so sad, Elmer,” I said.

“Oh, but it’s not so bad. Here at least I meet interesting people – and in the restaurant, they give me food,” he said.

“Oh! That’s good…. Like, mojarra?”

“No,” he smiled. “Never! Like, tortillas and beans.”

I looked down at my flaky white tilapia, my salad with slices of avocado and lime, my hand-made tortillas and fresh pineapple licuado. It had been a splurge at $12 – two days’ salary for Elmer.

“That’s why we keep coming to your country, no matter how many times you throw us out,” he was telling me, laughing. “I’m one of the lucky ones – at least I have a job. Those who work at the fincas have it much worse; they earn $50 every 15 days.”

The sunset was vanishing rapidly, as was my appetite. Fortunately, I had enjoyed most of my meal before Elmer arrived.

“Speaking of work, I have to do mine,” I said, changing the subject. “Where can I get the best photos of the sunset?”

So Elmer shifted into tour guide mode, showing me the path along the lake, the national flower – izote – and the presidential quinta. The shore of the lake was lighting up now that the sun was gone, and Elmer explained to me that most of the lights belonged to quintas, or private vacation homes of the wealthy. Lake Coatepeque, unlike Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, is mainly the preserve of the rich. Which, in this context, I am, despite my meager earnings as a freelance writer.

Elmer promised to wake at 5:30 to shoot the sunrise with me, and he says goodnight. Relieved, I order a coffee and a sorbet. Another $1.80. The coffee is Nescafe, but the sorbet is exquisite. The rain patters satisfyingly around me, an occasional bolt lighting up the volcano beyond this quinta’s arched window. I sigh.
It would all be so much more enjoyable, I think, if the world were just a bit more fair.

Photos from Santa Ana, El Salvador’s second-largest city and the capital of the department of Santa Ana:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From Tazumal, Casa Blanca and the town where they are found, Chalchuapa:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From the spectacular Lago Coatepeque and Parque Nacional Los Volcanes, including a climb of Cerro Verde and then Volcan Santa Ana, with views of Volcan Izalco:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Forget Barak Obama – he’s so 2009. Evo Morales is the new rock star president, as I learned in Coyoacan this weekend. A sea of enthusiastic people of every ethnicity waited for hours in the hot sun to hear his plea for a more just society, one that provides a dignified life for all and respects the rights of the Pachamama, Mother Earth. His rousing speech was preceded with performances by indigenous dancers and musicians and a Four Directions ceremony.

Here are a few scenes from the rally on Sunday.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Outside in the darkness, up in the hills not far from here, a chorus of coyotes is greeting the coming of the dawn. How appropriate, I think with a smile. Here in Huehuecoyotl, place of the old, old coyote, I’ve just bid farewell to the greatest coyote of all, Subcoyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil, who is letting me use his home as a base for a few days. Now it’s his time to head into Mexico City, where he is taking the lessons of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace into the barrios of that other place of coyotes, Coyoacán.

I’ve come to Huehuecoyotl to meet his family and some of the people who form this core group of world-changers. I’ve come to break bread, share stories, and glean advice for the journey ahead. Alberto has been in a whirlwind of activity since I arrived – he’s playing a lead role in a film about Fellini’s spiritual journey through Mexico, and the ghost-spirit of the great Italian filmmaker was just here to supervise from another dimension the shooting of some scenes; longtime friend Jose Arguelles, author and visionary, just spent some time here. During my two days here he’s just finished another book and sent it out to the reviewers, underwent a root canal and many hours of community meetings and obligations, and bid farewell to his daughter who is on her way back to Spain; now he’s preparing for a thousand-drum salute and fundraiser for the people of Haiti and a visit from Bolivian President Evo Morales, but still he took time to show me around, orient me to the solar shower and the composting toilet, share photos and reminisce about the incredible 13-year nomadic ecovillage whose trail I now follow, from Mexico to Patagonia.

An old legend tells of a time when the Earth is in crisis, and life itself is in danger. In these times, the legend goes, a new type of warrior will arise: a tribe of all races, creeds and nationalities who will be known by the universal symbol of the rainbow, and driven by love, their mission will be to save the planet from extinction.

So writes Alberto in his book, “Los Guerreros del Arcoiris.” (Rainbow Nation Without Borders-Bear & Company publishers)-Alberto has dedicated his life to nurturing this tribe, leading the Rainbow Caravan of Peace on an epic journey through Mexico, Central and South America. This nomadic ecovillage traveled from country to country, led by Alberto’s old schoolbus, La Mazorca, colorfully painted to resemble the iconic ear of corn. The ever-changing tribe sought to connect groups active in resistance to the destructive corporate model. They set up camp in jungles and mountains, in indigenous villages and urban ghettos, sharing music, theater and seeds of practical eco-wisdom: green building techniques, simple alternative technologies, natural healing techniques and more. At the same time, they gathered up bits of local lore and wisdom and connected the disparate groups into a hemispheric network. In August of 2009, the tribe finally disbanded, each dispersing to different parts of the continent to continue the consuming work of social change.

Alberto returned to Huehuecoyotl, the picturesque ecovillage established in 1982 in the mountains near Tepoztlan by Alberto and his community of rainbow warriors. He is letting me use his home as a base for a few days as I organize myself for the next phase of my journey. The beautiful adobe-brick home is filled with light from the arching windows that look out upon the grassy valley below; out the front door, past a tall green row of fragrant hoja santa plants, limestone cliffs tower protectively beyond the beautiful home of his son Odin, a musician and one of Mexico’s leading permaculture practitioners.

I will see Alberto once again before I go, when he hosts Bolivian President Evo Morales for a brief visit to the city on Sunday. Meanwhile, here is a short interview I did with him recently, at his office in the Casa de Cultura Reyes Heroles in Coyoacán. His warning comes as a coyote howl in the fading moonlight.

“Like the Mayan Zapatistas said, we have had a long time to dream. Now is the time to wake up. Because any dream we don’t manifest becomes a nightmare, made by somebody else.”

We still had nearly three hours to go before we reached Bancos, but meanwhile, a group of comuneros from Buenos Aires awaited a ride in the back of his pickup truck. Chávez jumped out from behind the wheel he’d manned since 10 p.m. the night before, greeting a shivering cluster of men with good cheer and a round of hearty handshakes. A breakfast invitation followed, and Nora, Cristian and Yaser, three other AJAGI members, joined us as we were led through what looked like a refugee camp. Nora and Cristian had passed the night in the back of the truck; Yaser was less fortunate, having passed the stormy night in Buenos Aires.

A bitter windstorm had ripped through the village, stripping the tin roofs from many of the mud-brick homes in the middle of the night as the residents slept. The unrelenting rains and near-freezing temperatures compounded the misery as residents tried to piece their lives back together.

Nonetheless, a visit from Carlos Chávez and the folks from AJAGI was more than reason enough for a gathering. One family with a sheltered outdoor kitchen still in good working order invited us to huddle together underneath as the rains began again, and steaming freshly ground tortillas came off the grill one by one to envelop home-grown scrambled eggs and savory pork-seasoned beans and potatoes. Family members clustered around to beam at us and urge us to eat more as we wolfed down what was likely their sole daily portion. But to decline would have been an insult, so we obliged.

The strange winds, the unseasonable rains, and the unthinkable snowstorm of two weeks prior were recurring themes in our visit. The summer rains didn’t come in time to water the harvest, and much of the corn crop dried on the stalk. Of what survived, much succumbed to fungus when the rains arrived late. And then, month upon month of winter rains – and now the tornado-like windstorm that has just descended upon them, the likes of which they’ve never seen.

Climate change is not a theory for the Wixaritari, the tribal people named Huichol by the Spaniards for easier pronunciation. They are convinced that they are living it every day, and they are seeing it in shorter growing seasons and strange weather patterns. They don’t know the reasons, but it worries them.

There’s no time to dwell on it, however. There’s firewood to be gathered, roofs to fix, children to feed – and, for some, a regional assembly to attend down in the valley in Bancos.

Attorney Santos De La Cruz Carillo, technical advisors Yaser Ventura and Cristian Chávez, and community members Don Jesús and Prudencio, left to right - and still enough room for me.

Spirits were high as we clambered into the back of Chávez’ well-worn and mud-caked Toyota pickup truck. Bancos is in a sheltered valley, and considerably warmer than Buenos Aires, up in the mountaintops some 7,000 feet above sea level. Also, most of these families originally lived in Bancos. The residents of Buenos Aires are modern-day pioneers engaged in the act of resettling and at the same time reforesting the land ravaged by timber poachers from the neighboring mestizo communities.

The resettlement is all a part of a larger strategy, devised by Huichol community leaders hand-in-hand with Carlos and the rest of the AJAGI team, which has provided legal and technical assistance for nearly two decades, helping the community reclaim 55,000 hectares of land that had been annexed away from their territory and encroached upon over the years. An estimated 140,000 acres are at stake, including a 10,720-acre swath separating Bancos from its core community of San Andres Cohamiata in the neighboring state of Jalisco. In a groundbreaking decision in 1998, the International Labor Organization ruled that the Huichol people had a right to the land based on ancestral ownership, even though they don’t hold legal titles – a ruling the Mexican government has thus far failed to acknowledge. Repeated pronouncements from the international agency received no response until last year, when the Mexican government finally ruled in Bancos’ favor – but with a catch. It failed to recognize the ancestral rights outlined in a key document called Convention 169, and so the case remains in litigation.

“The case of Bancos at one point was once described by the current director of the United Nations Forum on Indigenous Peoples as probably the most important case in the world” with respect to indigenous land rights, said Chávez. “If the case is resolved in the community’s favor, it will be of benefit to all indigenous people in the world.”

But this is only one of many strategies, one layer of the many layers of stories to be told about the Wixaritari people. I was fortunate to hear many of them in the past week, and I will be sharing them as time permits. Meanwhile, here are some images from the enormously resilient little community of Bancos.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Coyoacan has always been one of my favorite parts of Mexico City – indeed, it’s the favorite of millions, being a top tourist destination and the home of Frida and Diego, Leon Trotsky and Hernán Cortés. The zone has long been a hotbed of cultural and political innovation, and today it’s one of the most culturally rich and scenic parts of the city, with structures dating to its sixteenth century inception.

On Wednesday I went down for a visit with Subcoyote Alberto Ruz, and after two and a half hours of video, had only enough battery power left for a few shots, sadly. Note to self: NEVER leave home without a spare battery.

This doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive or even complete tour of this beautiful area, just a meander down Francisco Sosa street to the Plaza Central. “Coyoacan,” I learned from the Subcoyote, means “Place of the Coyote” in ancient Nahuatl, and indeed the Coyote seems to be quite present in modern-day Coyoacan, in spirit if not in the flesh.

I also had the pleasure of stumbling upon the place where, supposedly, the famous Tacos al Pastor were invented: El Tizoncito. Sadly, the battery ran out just as the tacos arrived. I can only tell you, they were as beautiful as they were delicious.

In the meantime, enjoy! I know I did.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’m not a natural-born runner; my body resists it in every way. But I took up the hobby last year, realizing that if I were going to stay fit on the road, I’d need to rely on means that don’t include going to a gym. Besides, running doubles as an aerobic form of sightseeing – albeit without the camera, the only thing I regretted about today’s run.

(From Friday’s walk: One of several fountains on Amsterdam Street)

I headed straight for Calle Amsterdam, a verdant loop through the heart of La Condesa with a tree-lined path in the center. Formerly called Calle Hipódromo, the loop is what remains of the old Condesa racetrack. Now laced with fountains and gardens and lined with colorful cafés and boutiques among the classic art-deco architecture, it bears no semblance to a racetrack – except for the presence of the other joggers.

The high point was Parque México, an enormous stretch of greenery filled with children learning to rollerblade, boys kicking a soccer ball, tiny dogs in colorful sweaters and their attentive owners, elders perusing newspapers, youngsters listening to MP3 players and families pedaling a four-seated bicycle contraption for rent in the plaza.

Smells of roasting corn, savory pork tacos and fresh flowers filled the rain-washed air. A gentleman sat in front of a booth surrounded by small tables and filled with wooden objects and painting supplies; for $3 you could buy a small animal or for $6 a little wooden jewelry box, and you could paint it however you liked.

Further along I found Mejor en Bici (Better on a Bike), a nonprofit group that provides free bicycles for “rent” in several parks around the city. All you have to do is leave your ID and a 200-peso note, and you can take the bike for a spin.

I don’t know whether it was because of the altitude (Mexico City is about a mile and a half higher than Houston!) or that I’m out of shape after three weeks of huddling in the cold, or simply because there was so much to see, but it was a run-walk type of run. At any rate, it felt great to unclench my huddled shoulders and feel the sun on my skin again.

There are many calculators online that help you to figure out how much carbon you’ve generated and where you should donate it. Carbon Footprint is a nice flexible one that lets you calculate individual aspects of your life as opposed to doing a whole audit – both can be good, but since I’m on the road, my lifestyle doesn’t easily fit into many of these calculators. Since my main impact is travel, I figured my mileage and multiplied the air travel by 1.9 to account for the increased impact airplane emissions have (the amount used by Carbon Footprint). It then lets you select from a variety of worthy projects from Kenya to Central America.

Critics compare this system with the Catholic Church’s system of indulgences in Medieval times – a system that allowed people to “buy” forgiveness for their sins by making donations to the Church. They argue that there’s a wide variance among carbon offsetting groups, none of them are regulated and there’s no way to know for sure that the trees you’re paying to plant wouldn’t be planted anyway.

Now I’m not interested in buying forgiveness or polishing my image, and I don’t really care if the amount of carbon I’m generating is translated precisely into the right number of trees. I am, however, interested in minimizing my impact while promoting social change. So when I learned that The Farm in Tennessee had set up a system allowing donations to be used to plant trees at the Marda Permaculture Farm, I decided to go that route. I trust the judgment of the folks at The Farm, which has been a leader in promoting sustainable living around the globe for decades; and I also know quite a bit about the Marda project.

Although I don’t know them directly, I have a personal relationship the Marda Permaculture Farm because my sister Tami Brunk is a co-founder. She worked with founder Murad Alkufash to establish the organization, eventually traveling to Marda. She has shared with me much about the group’s work over the years, not just in terms of supplying much-needed food security but in building resilience and hope in the Palestinian territories, where those elusive qualities are so desperately needed.

So, having decided on where I wanted to put my money, I did my own calculations with the help of The Farm’s Trees for Airmiles page and
Geobyte’s City Distance Tool to calculate my mileage: Flying from St. Louis to Mexico City via Dallas racked up 1,481 miles; multiply that by 1.9 as Carbon Footprint suggests and you get 2,813 miles. Then I did a rough calculation of what I think the next two months will look like: Mexico City to Guadalajara to Nayarit to Guadalajara to Mexico City, then down to Cuernavaca, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Quintana Roo before heading over into Belize. All of that comes, very roughly, to about 2,793 miles.

Put it all together, and that comes to about 5,606 miles for the two months or so that I’ll need for Mexico. Using The Farm’s calculation of 1 tree per 5,000 for plane travel, and 1 tree per 1,100 miles for car travel (though I’ll mostly be traveling by bus, which should have a considerably lower impact), and I figured I’m more than covered at $10 a month, which will plant 30 trees this year.

I don’t know if it’s enough or too much. But at least I’m trying – and so are the folks in Marda. As I see it, that can only be a good thing.

What are your thoughts and experiences on the subject of carbon offsets? Please share in the comment section below.

My first evening found me in Cafe La Boheme, a charming cafe that was serving Rosca de Reyes, a seasonal specialty featuring candied fruits and a delicious cream filling. I found an internet signal, a cup of cappucino and sat down to enjoy my rosca and e-mail. Just as I prepared to leave, a local musician by the name of Sergio Fernandez Pavón took the mike and dedicated his performance to the great Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, whose recent passing created a vast void in the Latin American folk music scene. I was hooked. The next two hours held music and poetry, laughter and comraderie and a little boy with a little guitar to match. An altogether excellent first night in D.F.

Thursday started bright and early with a breakfast in La Condesa with the Angelica Foundation´s Ana Paula Hernandez, a human rights advocate who has been working with indigenous people on land rights and environmental issues. I´ll write more about Ana Paula later; meanwhile, here´s a tour of the beautiful Condesa.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The high point, however, came on Thursday evening, when I went to get a haircut at a trendy little boutique salon in La Roma, a neighborhood bordering the very chic La Condesa. My stylist, Miguel, was very charming and was doing his best to give me a much needed hairstyle when the lights went out. Not just in our salon but down the entire street.

We sat there for half an hour in the dark, trading jokes and stories, and finally I decided to seek another hairdresser to finish the job. I greatly underestimated the professionalism of this group; I was told quite firmly by a very muscular and tattooed hairdresser down the street that I should let the original stylist finish what he had started, since it would be impossible to know what he had planned to do.

I sighed and went on a search for tacos; my half-cut hair did not diminish my pleasure at finding a bustling everyday festival of outdoor eateries, each with its own savory specialty, surrounding the Chilpancingo Metro station. For 50 cents I chose my favorite – the pineapple-tinged smoked pork tacos al pastor,  with fresh cilantro, onions and a squeeze of lime – and was not disappointed. I stood side by side under the plastic overhang with other diners, taking respite from the drizzle in the bright and cheery outdoor cafe, watching the kitchen magicians do their work, and felt thoroughly happy to be here.

I made my way to the famous La Espiga bakery, where people stack trays high with their favorite pan dulces (sweet breads) and chose a tiny fruit tart for Miguel. I headed back in the drizzle, just in time to deliver the pastry and collect the end of my haircut before closing time.

I´ll let you be the judge: How did Miguel do?

I’ve made my list and checked it a million times; selected and reselected my gear; said my goodbyes and received good wishes and safe travel blessings from near and far. I’ve left my car keys, my smart phone and my GPS behind. I’ll be making my way by foot now and by mass transit; everything I’ll need is either in my pack or shoulder bag, or it’s something I’ll have to find along the way, or live without.

I’ve been on multiple deadlines for weeks, with barely a moment to linger over a cup of tea with a loved one. Now the last loved one has pulled away from the curb, I’ve checked my backpack and I’ve made my way through security with an hour to spare, and there’ll be lingering aplenty.

Today, the only thing on my list is Mexico City.

There in the Mexican megalopolis, people are still rushing to make appointments – and I will too, tomorrow. But this afternoon I’ll greet a climate 40 degrees warmer and a mindset to match. I’ll slow down and take time to think; to read a book; to chat with the people I meet along the way. I’ll take time to breathe and look around.

“Are you excited?” my daughter texted me last night as I checked my list for the millionth time.

“Not yet,” I responded. “Just a little panicky: Have I forgotten something? Will I miss my flight? Do I have everything I need?”

Now, however, as the coffee does its work and boarding time approaches, I have a moment to reflect on the year ahead. Yes, I’m excited. Also apprehensive – and curious – and a little bit sleepy. But mostly I’m grateful.

In the year ahead, my plan is to travel the length of Latin America, from Mexico to Patagonia, documenting the Latin American environmental movement all along the way for The Esperanza Project and other publications. I hope you will follow my journey on both sites. The Esperanza Project will be focused on telling the stories of protagonists in the sustainability movement in the Americas; Roads Less Traveled will be about my personal experience, part travel narrative, part advice for a new generation of digital nomads. At the end, I’ll have a book to write and perhaps a documentary to put together, as I will be shooting video as well.

Not many people have the opportunity to take a year to follow their dream. I am hoping that I can do something bigger with this trip – to do what all dreamers hope to do, to make a difference, for myself, for others and for the planet. But even if I don’t, it’s the adventure of a lifetime, and with that, I’m satisfied.

For those of you who have offered your support, your prayers and your ideas and suggestions, I thank you. Thanks most of all for reading, and check this spot soon, and also The Esperanza Project. You can subscribe by e-mail or RSS feed from both of the sites, and/or you can follow me on Facebook (both as a fan of The Esperanza Project and as a friend of ME – And also on Twitter, @esperanzaprojec and @thirstyboots07.

I don’t know how this story will end any more than you do. But won’t it be fun to find out?

(Deejay Pilot-istockphoto)

Somewhere to the south of us, an indigenous farmer is raising his voice against the eradication of ancient seed stocks by corporate interests. An army of volunteer gardeners is sowing a food security system on rooftops, patios and abandoned lots. A tribe in the Amazon is using Google Earth to give virtual tours of its ancestral forests in a bid to build global support for their preservation. A troupe of young bicyclists is plotting colorful new ways to capture the public’s attention and steer its city policy toward the path of sustainability.

As forests burn, icecaps melt and sea levels rise, people at the grassroots aren’t waiting for the government to fix things for them. Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America.

We in the United States hear little of this, as our news sources dedicate very little ink to the work of world changers at the local level, and even less to those of the Global South. The Esperanza Project seeks to shift this balance with a focused look at the eco-heroes who are dedicating their imaginations, their passions and in some cases their very lives to the cause of a sustainable future.

Next week, I’ll begin a yearlong journey aimed at bringing the work of some of these unsung heroes to light. By sharing their stories, I hope to inspire a greater sense of the global nature of our struggle. My goal is to help shift the media imbalance that favors the North over the South, the powerful over the powerless, the sensational and catastrophic over the constructive and gradual, and the large over the small.

This will be accomplished on many levels, from The Esperanza Project website itself, to the ripple effect created by training a network of volunteer contributors and giving them a platform on which to publish. Meanwhile my own writing will target US audiences in a variety of media.

None of this, of course, occurs without dinero. The Esperanza Project has incorporated as a nonprofit organization and we are seeking funding and sponsors. This process takes time, however, and the expenses have already begun to mount.

I am writing to you as 2009 draws to a close to ask you to consider making a tax-deductible contribution to our cause. The Esperanza Project is a low-budget operation run on volunteer energy and passion, so you can be sure that your money will be used with extreme care and frugality.

Now’s the time that nonprofit media can step in to fill the growing void formed by dying newspapers, and it can do so in a creative and meaningful way, but it will require support from its readers. Be a part of The Esperanza Project – we promise we will make you proud.

Sincerely,

Tracy L. Barnett and The Esperanza Project volunteers

P.S. Whether or not you contribute financially, there is much you can do to support The Esperanza Project. Learn more at www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/about and www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/get-involved.

Thanks for reading!

Contribute by clicking on the PayPal button below to enter your credit card or bank account number, or send a check or money order to Tracy L. Barnett, 161 Lovera Ave., San Antonio, Texas, 78212, with “Esperanza Project” in the memo field. Thank you!