March 12, 2021
It was Friday, March 12, when I hopped on a Zoom call with Diego. It had been exactly a year since that Friday when everything changed here in BC, when school and work went online for many, and we were advised to stay at home as much as possible.
Diego joined me from his hometown Ibarra, Ecuador, which he says is his favourite place. It’s where his family and everyone he’s known from childhood also live. Diego, who studied at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, was among the group of students who found themselves completing their university degrees in what can only be described as an unprecedented time in the spring of 2020.
2020: A Rollercoaster Ride
“When the pandemic started, I was in my last term at UBC,” say Diego. “Everybody was worried about the coronavirus becoming a pandemic by then. But I remember just going to class on a Friday. I had heard the news that at UBC everything was going to [go virtual] from Monday. I went to the last class, but the prof said: okay guys, do you want to stay for your class or do you want me to post it as a video? Everyone said video. So there was no good-bye, no nothing, and everyone just went home.”
At this time, the virus was spreading rapidly in Ecuador, as well. Diego worried about his family back home, checking to see if there was an outbreak in his hometown. It was a stressful time for Diego and for many international students like himself. One of Diego’s friends had to make the difficult decision to get on a flight right away that weekend, leaving a job, a place, and her life in Vancouver behind in a matter of days.
“I was dealing with other issues, too,” says Diego. “I had so much pressure on me because I knew it was my last term, and I didn’t know what else was going to happen after UBC. And I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression. Besides my friends being worried about the coronavirus, I was carrying my own things.”
With so many changes and worries colliding all at once, Diego remembers the feeling of being on a roller coaster ride.
“But I was happy because my professors were really supportive as I was going through stuff. That felt really good. And my friends helped me reach out to the professors. I’m really thankful, and am glad that I received as much help as I needed at the time. It really helped me to go through what I was dealing with.”
Returning to Ecuador
Early on when pandemic living became a reality overnight, the hope was that we would stay at home and socially distance for a few weeks, and then normalcy would resume.
“I had hoped that we would have a graduation ceremony. But month after month, things got worse,” says Diego.
Though Diego had not wanted to leave Vancouver like this, financial concerns weighed on him. And when his close friend decided to return to Ecuador, he had to quickly make a call for himself.
“She told me, there’s a humanitarian flight. You go tomorrow with me, or you stay and you don’t know when you’ll have the chance to go back. So I had to pack my bag, take my last final exam, before going to the airport. And I had, I don’t know, 36 hours to do all of that. I didn’t know I’d have to throw a lot of the things I had for four years.”
“I’m sure I’m not the only one,” Diego says. “I’m sure there are many, many people with stories like this. It was a crazy time. Countries closing borders, sending humanitarian flights.”
Materials Engineer
It was 2016 when Diego first arrived in Canada, in a cohort of students with scholarships from the Ecuadorian government. Before traveling to Canada, Diego had already met some of the students who were also coming to study at UBC. And once in Vancouver, he found a tight-knit, welcoming Ecuadorian community, who liked to get together and support each other.
In university, Diego studied Materials Engineering. And he hopes to use the knowledge he’s acquired from his education to help out with the family business.
“They have a small business where they work with metals. We manufacture equipment through a foundry. But what I realized is that I have just the background, but don’t have the required knowledge to actually help in a more specific way. So I need to see if I do a technical specialization focused on sand casting, manufacturing techniques, or the chemical aspects of making the compounds.”
Diego is looking into some programs in Brazil for further studies. Brazil has a more developed industry in the area of his family’s business. While waiting out the pandemic, he has brushed up on his Portuguese language skills, and passed the test he would need to pursue his studies in Brazil in the future.
Tackling Ecuador’s child malnutrition
Upon returning to Ecuador last spring, Diego has been putting much of his time, energy, and love into an organization he founded, called YANAPANA.
“By June, I had just graduated. A couple of weeks after the online ceremony, I was thinking, what can I do right now? The pandemic is not allowing me to think about going to Brazil, and things like that. I was noticing that virtual meetings and platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams were becoming very popular.
Many Ecuadorians went back home or went to other places in the world, and we cannot come together to create a project right now. But I thought, right now, there is no obstacle from being in a different part of the world. Because of these tools, you can be anywhere and still do something together.”
This thought led Diego to reach out to his Ecuadorian friends from university. He wanted to help children in Ecuador in some way. His initial idea had to do with the lack of internet access for many Ecuadorian children, which was especially an issue as in-person schooling was off. It took a couple of weeks before he received the first few responses from his friends. But eventually, the community came together in support of the idea.
“We set a date for the first Zoom meeting, and eight or ten people came. We started talking about different topics. Access to the internet, supplying basic needs, and so on. We had different ideas, so we took a week or two to just do some research. When we came together again, we decided that we wanted to help children by addressing their basic needs: having food, access to water and energy, things like that.
We learned that in Ecuador, there is a big malnutrition problem. One of two Indigenous children experience malnutrition. And in general, a big portion of children in my country faces the issue of malnutrition. We thought that even if we want to help them get access to education, the lack of nutrients could affect their ability to learn and achieve high levels of academic performance.”
Based on research, they found, a person’s first five years in life is crucial in determining their future academic performance, and their professional and economic prospects. With this in mind, they narrowed their focus down to nutrition from the earliest stage of life, from pregnancy to 5 years of age.
So tackling the child malnutrition problem in Ecuador became the main objective for the YANAPANA project. The organization now has a large team of volunteers, who specialize in areas such as logistics, national and international relations, marketing, education, and human resources.
Translation services, academic consulting, and personalized Spanish lessons are the main ways the organization raises funds. In February, in association with UBC’s Ecuadorian Student Association, YANAPANA organized a fundraiser in a series of online events called Latin Week. They had a panel discussion about the impact of COVID in Canada and in Latin America, vegan cooking lessons with easy-to-find ingredients, Zumba classes, and Spanish lessons.
YANAPANA: Helping takes action
“With the money that we were able to collect, we are now going into the next stage, which is actually helping the families,” says Diego.
“We already have some contacts with some neighbourhoods in the capital’s suburbs. What we’re going to do in the next couple of weeks is to visit the neighbourhood to make direct contact with the families. Because we have this priority for pregnant women and families with children under 5 years of age, we’ll need to gather this information.
What’s important is that we don’t want to just give food baskets to the families. We want to help in a more holistic way, and support them for an extended period of time. And that will depend on each family and their needs. We look at how to help each family. We need to see if they have a fridge, because if not, it would be hard for them to store food items that are perishable. So that’s part of the process.
We’re very happy that we work with nutritionists who are there to help develop a diet for the families. In Ecuador, it’s pretty common during Christmas or for a special day to collect non-perishable food products and visit communities in rural areas with food baskets. But these are one-time activities, and it could be just things like flour, which is not nutritionally balanced on its own. With the nutritionists on our team, we really try to develop the best diet for each family.”
Diego recalls one particular family visit, in which he had the chance to meet the grandmother of the family.
“She was very knowledgeable. It’s only because of the pandemic and some health issues that she’s not able to do what she had been doing to bring food to the table for her home. She was really open to talking to us and having a conversation. It was really nice to talk to people like that.”
Diego and the YANAPANA team understand that as they expand their work with communities and families, some of their ideas and strategies will change. They’re also thinking about ways to support communities in a more sustainable way, including creating community gardens.
“Right now, there are many NGOs that are focusing on the issue of malnutrition here in Ecuador. It’s really nice to see that there’s a lot of people worried about what’s happening in our country, and trying to find ways to support communities. It would be really hard for one NGO that’s just starting to supply everyone who needs help. So it’s better that there are many people and organizations helping different communities in different parts of the country.
A big vision that we have is that one day, this project can be replicated in other countries in South America and around the globe.”
YANAPANA means to help in Kichua, an indigenous language spoken in the region. The name signifies that helping takes action.
Mental health is just as important as physical health
On a personal note, Diego can’t stress enough the importance of taking care of one’s mental health.
“I still have some sleeping issues because of anxiety and depression that I had,” says Diego. “I’m much better now, but when I try to sleep, all the things come up. And I’m not able to rest. It’s been like that for some months now. It’s also because one of my very close friends passed away last September. That was a very sad moment in my life. I had thought everything was getting better, but after that, I kind of fell down again. I feel better now, but inside of me I don’t know if I really am better. That’s something I’m trying to work on. I mediate, and that helps a lot.
Last year, I went through a lot of things, for my mental health as well as physical. I believe mental health is just as important as physical health. And if we don’t take care of our mental health, it’s going to be reflected in our physical health later on. That was my experience. I thought I was just stressed out, and then I started to develop a pain on my left arm. And one time, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It’s really important to consider that your mental health is going to affect your physical health at some point.
Also, having a community that supports you, one that you can reach out to for help is important for people who are going through a hard time. Right now during the pandemic, it’s a difficult time for many people. Or even going through university can sometimes be a hard thing. Because it’s not always just university. Everybody has their own problems – family, health, being abroad in a different country, the language barrier… There are many aspects. I’m really glad that I was part of such an international community that was able to support me during the hard time that I had.
I believe mental health is a topic everybody should be talking about, and taking seriously. People can develop other health problems because of mental health, and not realize that fact until it’s really late.”
The ongoing reality of living through a pandemic has certainly made for a challenging time for many. With COVID-19 having been around for over a year now, I personally am starting to experience a more chronic impact on my mental health. Not quite the same sharp feeling of shock and anxiety from the early days of the pandemic, but a more foggy, dull pain and fatigue from all that this past year has been.
What gives me hope today, though, is conversations like this in which mental health is openly discussed and acknowledged as an important topic. And seeing individuals like Diego and the volunteers behind the YANAPANA Project who have turned this strange, difficult time into an opportunity to make a positive impact in the communities they care about.
Learn more about YANAPANA on their website. Maybe sign up for a Spanish class or five while you’re at it.
Diego Núñez @dieandrex
YANAPANA Project @yanapana_project
