Peter Bosch

Sarah: As I mentioned back in October, we have a volunteer worker here with us for 6 months at QERC. Peter Bosch is a recent graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While Peter graduated with a Spanish degree, he also took all of the pre-requisites for medical school and has already been accepted into medical school at the University of Michigan for the fall of 2009. During his year off, Peter was looking for an opportunity to serve in Latin America with a focus on international and sustainable development. With a little encouragement from a professor at Calvin who has a long history at QERC, Peter approached SNU with the idea of volunteering here for about 6 months.

As part of his time here, Peter is developing his own project that he can develop and implement during his time. With many options on the table, Peter has chosen to work in the QERC Restoration Nursery to further develop it and make it available to the community. He has already spent many hours identifying plants that would be good additions to the nursery. Peter is concentrating on plants that fall into 4 categories: erosion control, ornamental, reforestation, and those that produce fruits that quetzals and other birds eat. All plants are native to this valley and should be appealing to the community for many reasons.

A second part of Peter’s project will be making the nursery better known throughout the community and available for them to take. He will create a flyer to pass out to the 130-150 people who live here and explain what types of plants are available to them and the benefits they have. Peter will also serve as a consultant to the community members who want to take advantage of these free plants.

Besides working on his own project, Peter is giving 15-20 hours a week of his time to helping with the general work around QERC. David has taken advantage of the extra hands and together the two of them have done a lot of maintenance that was much needed. Peter has also been a big help in getting things ready and organized for the semester program to begin, and we look forward to his help as the program gets underway in the beginning of January. In addition, Peter has taken on the task of teaching English to members of the community twice a week. It’s great to see extra activity going on here and people doing good things as representatives of QERC.