For me it's very gratifying to share with the Green Map network our activities that we have done in the traditional coffee growing region of Colombia during this year.

First of all, the process with one of the high school (Gonzalo Mejia Echeverry) has become stronger. In this moment, Fundación Geovida (our local non-profit organization) have been designing an eco-landscaping feature inside the school, a beautiful ecological path made of bamboo. We will be highlighting local myths and legends along this thematic path. An architecture student is volunteering with us in its development. This idea has been welcomed by the local history teacher, and the art and biology teachers that have decided to coordinate all their projects around one: Green Map Project.

Last July, Joe Gerlach, who is a student of Cartography from Oxford Univesity visited us who came to learn about our Green Mapmaking experiences with low-income communities and k-12 schools in rural and urban settings. During the research process we were able to asses the impacts of Green Mapmaking in the daily lives of people. We are having this publication ready in September/ October 2008. During his visit we had the opportunity to be interviewed by a local TV station along the university mapmakers of Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira.

By these days, I had begun to write the experiences about green map in Pereira. I want to share my conclusions and recommendations and have everything ready for this year.

After one year and a half leading Fundación Geovida and the Green Map projects, we start working to consolidate a community collective in Pereira (Espacio y Ciudad - Space and City) to analyze the public space problems. At this moment, the Green Maps have been used as tools to observe the actual problems and later will be used to improve our spaces.

This community collective is also planning an event focused on mobility (September 25th) as a way to raise awareness on mobility problems. For this event, I will introduce Green Maps as a Community Based Planning Tool to assess mobility. We will be launching the Green Maps of the Rural Biking Routes.

In this regard, I wish to thank Wendy and the entire map green team that has helped us that 100% volunteer work we are doing in Pereira can continue. However, our weakness has been the difficulty in obtaining financial resources to enable us to give more support to communities already linked to us and reach new communities

So, I hope that those who can give us ideas of financing or may seek international support to help make this,please contact me! we hope that our local government and private companies will put their heart and hand in his pocket to continue with this process that is beautiful and we are doing with a lot love!

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YELITZA ANDREA ESPINOSA NARVAEZ
yelitzandrea@gmail.com
Administradora Ambiental
Directora Ejecutiva
Fundación GEOvida