Our CTC

At our Community Transformation Center - CTC (also called “TekoatÍ”, meaning “working together” in the indigenous Guaraní language), we invite partners, educators, and villagers to join us as we create model systems to improve life in rural communities and pilot transformational ideas for development. Tekoatí aspires to advance healthy lifestyles, in tandem with supporting the health of our planet. We model and educate about composting, organic gardening of vegetables, organic pesticides and fertilizer, medicinal herbs, aquaponics for food security, automatic and manual water systems, composting toilets, and organic coffee growing.

We host a range of educational retreats, pilot projects, and community gatherings. These include medicinal plant training, water committee development, and public health workshops attended by community members who exchange ideas and learn from local experts. Women return home with plant starts from our CTC campus gardens, herbal tinctures they have produced in class, and a deeper sense of how to be a public health resource for members of their communities. Often these women bring their children with them, and the children are also engaged in learning.

The CTC also hosts university students and educators for immersion experiences in development, public health, engineering, and environmental research. Our unique location makes it easy for them to reach the surrounding villages where we implement projects. Additionally, the CTC hosts international volunteers from up to 30 countries each year who are committed to our work in Bolivia.

In addition to maintaining our medicinal gardens and providing support at workshops offered on campus, our volunteers also engage in local community projects like road maintenance, assisting with the installation of composting latrines, and special projects like planting the next generation of ‘Jipjapa’ plants for a co-op of 700 indigenous Bolivian women artists, who use the plants to create jewelry and artwork they sell.