Echo Field Trip

On the most recent Colloquium field trip, we visited a farm called ECHO. Echo stands for Education Concerns for Hunger Organization. Their mission statement: “Our goal is to improve the abilities of international community development workers assisting poor farmers by providing useful, important information and by networking their skills and knowledge with each other.” At Echo, almost all of the staff is volunteers, and they provide internships for students who are majoring in an agricultural field of some sort and are looking to benefit their own knowledge by getting an awesome hands on direct experience. The volunteers give many many tours a day around their farm to all sorts of groups of people looking to be more informed about programs like echo and how they are contributing to the environment.

While I was at echo, I learned about many different aspects of farms that I have never seen before. They use many appropriate technologies at Echo, which are tools made out of resources you can mostly find in nature that help run the environment. For example, biogas turns cow manure into gas for cooking and lighting. They also had many animals on their farm such as chickens, will help eat and kill bugs that will destroy crops, goats, which are used for milk and transportation and their manure, and bunnies, which I honestly wasn’t quite sure why they were there but they were very cute.

Echo is a Christian based organization that has such strong faith in their community and the people who are contributing anything to help the poor farmers and inform them of how they can raise a better environment to grow food for themselves and their families. They offer tours to the community so they can share their faith and beliefs so other people will get involved. Echo’s core values are “We are Christian in our behavior, beliefs, motivations, and attitudes; We are Stewards of the resources God gives us; We are Servants in both our management style and our focus on others; We are Partners as we join with other organizations and agencies to accomplish our goals; We value People as we work and interact with each other and those we serve, giving priority to people over institutional structure; and We are committed to helping those who help the poor!”

The staff at Echo have the right attitude and commitment and this visit made an impact on me and taught me many interesting aspects about farms I never would’ve thought of before. I am glad there are people like these that are truly committed to making a difference.