ECHO

ECHO

ECHO is an information hub for development practitioners around the world. We gather solutions from around the world that are solving hunger problems and disseminate them to our active network. These solutions promote sustainable farming techniques, nutritional plants, and appropriate technologies. They are well tested and proven to be successful over and over again.

Hill Gardening

We really enjoyed learning about how to maintain and grow our own garden, no matter what kind of environment we have or what supplies we have in hand. One particular place we liked was the mountain side and it is possible to grow on a hill. It was brilliant to teach our regions and countries that are developing and lack resources such as water and food, to help take advantage of every square inch they have around them. It also informed us that something like this is possible to have a sustainable living environment no matter how big or how small.

Making Oil

One sustainable way to help developing countries, not only with gardening but making their own resources such as nut butters(such as almond, peanut and cashew) as well as oils(such as sunflower, canola and grapeseed). With ECHO's ability to help local environments become sustainable no matter the resources on hand, they become efficient and eco-friendly. Being able to trade seeds with other countries, especially developing countries, they are also able to exchange methods of living and developing other healthy products to help them with their diet and feed the rest of their families, all in a safe, healthy and locally grown way.

ECHO's Impact

The ECHO field trip was an interesting one.  I think it’s great that an organization like this exist to help people in less fortunate situations be able to provide food and clean water for their community.  It was interesting learning all the different techniques that ECHO teaches these people.  All the tools and pumps are made from basic materials that these poor areas would have at their disposal.  The techniques they used were very efficient and environmentally friendly such as when they used the fish to produce a food source for the algae which would then clean the water.  Also it is very important that they are creating the largest seed bank since most seeds in the world are now genetically modified hybrids that will not last as long as the original seeds.

Sustainability

ECHO was a pretty interesting field trip; Interesting due to the fact that there is nothing else like it (that I know of), and it acts as a collective knowledge base for farming techniques. ECHO makes an attempt to see what works and what doesn't when it comes to (mostly low income) farming, and they forward their best techniques to their other locations. ECHO is apparently also the largest seed repository in the world. I honestly had no idea anything like ECHO even existed, but it seems like a great idea. The most interesting part was seeing what kind of food they were able to generate using their shared principles and techniques.