"Eco-Cookies" for X-mas

Here in Ecuador every year people give away small plastic bags of sweets to their friends and family for x-mas. And every year after x-mas we encounter candy wrappers all over the place, even along the roadside on the way to our neighbor to buy milk in the morning.

So this year we had the idea of baking cookies together with the kids in Las Tolas and show them how much fun it is to make your own cookies and how much garbage you can reduce by doing so. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any school-free day before x-mas to invite the Las Tolas kids. Due to the El Niño year the rainfalls expected for this year’s rainy season are higher (and they are!) and the kids are also having school on Saturdays at the moment in order to get a longer break throughout the rainy season. But although we couldn’t invite the kids to the reserve to bake cookies altogether, the students and volunteers at Un poco del Chocó were more than happy to help with the task ;-)

So shortly before x-mas we spent two afternoons in our kitchen, preparing easy cookie recipes, painting paper bags and filling them. Each paper bag got a small note with the recipes and a short explanation why it’s so much more „eco-logical“ to bake your own cookies. On the 23rd I went up to Las Tolas together with Christian and we handed out our cookie bags to the kids. No doubt that they all loved it!!

Thanks to Randi W. for some of the photos!