Local residents visit remote area of Mexico with FRB

Living in America, it’s easy to lose perspective on just how good we really have it: if we’re hungry, we can go to the grocery store. If we’re cold, we can turn on the heater, and if we’re hot, we can turn on the air conditioning. Conrad First Presbyterian Church Pastor Kerry Carson and member Ryan Callaway recently spent a week in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas learning about food production and the work that the Food Resource Bank (FRB) is doing to help increase food security in the developing region.
           
“You’re always reminded when you step outside the borders of the United States that we are the unusual ones. We live unlike most of the rest of the world, and so it was really good to get reminded that most of the world lives very simply and differently than we do,” Carson said. “What you take away from a trip like this is the hope that you see because they’re beginning to make some progress.”
           
Carson, Callaway and other members of the FRB delegation travelled to the villages of San Jose la Nueva, El Llano Alto, Juan de Grijalva, El Bosque, El Chanal and La Siberia while staying in San Cristobal de las Casas during the trip, and the residents there are now beginning to grow garden sized plots of crops to be used for both their own sustenance and resale for a profit. Families are often divided as men will relocate to other areas to find work (some even illegally immigrate to the U.S.) in order to send money back, and one of the goals of FRB is to create a local infrastructure that helps keeps more families together. 
 
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