Hi everyone! I guess introductions are in order. I'm Andrea Maldonado. I'm the "Project Coordinator" for the PSP Peru project and I'm here in Lima with Rebecca and Kamil carrying out our documentary project on Food Security and Urban Agriculture. It is a very special experience for me to be back in Lima again, 1 year later after having finished my research here and returning home to Canada. It feels very different this time, being here with a new gang and with a new objective.

Yesterday I started the phone calls to the different organizations we are hoping to interview and I was shocked and so pleased that I got ahold of everyone on my first try. This first day of success made me realize that this project is really going forward and that we are going to have some amazing results. We had our first interview this morning with "EcoCiudad" (EcoCity), a local non-profit that focuses on urban environmental sustainability. I had no idea what to expect from them in this first meeting, but the two staff who met with us were incredibly open and quickly made us feel welcome. One of them was the Executive Director of EcoCiudad, Luis Cortez, a lovely and articulate man in his forties with a gentle demeanor and smiling eyes. The other was Jazmin, a young and outgoing environmental engineer working at EcoCiudad, in her mid-twenties, who seemed a perfect blend of kindness, youthfulness, maturity and professionalism. The two responded to our questions with more enthusiasm, sincerity and depth than I could have hoped for.

The experiences they described of working with the community on urban agriculture projects were very inspiring, and also reassuring in that their work is evidence that social programs with the right vision can lead to sustainable change and give hope for an end to poverty. I have to admit that toward the end of my stay here in Peru last year, I was getting frustrated by the vast inequalities in the society and the blatant negligence and corruption of the government. I was cynical that any change could every really be achieved, the problems seemed so immense and deep-rooted. But this morning I realized that I have yet to see all of Lima and because of the work of organizations like EcoCiudad, there does appear to be hope, and change does seem to be happening and expanding in this place. I can't wait to see it first hand in the coming days when we get to go out to these communities and meet the actors in this story. Stay tuned.

Much love,

Andrea