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The World from PRX •

How to save Colombia’s high-altitude bees

It was a brutally cold and windy July morning at almost 12,000 feet up in the Andes as University of Kansas bee researcher Victor Gonzalez and a couple of students walked toward what looks like a shrubby moonscape.Gonzalez’s team was in his home country of Colombia to learn more about bees all around the country. They were a few hours north of the country’s capital, Bogotá, visiting an endangered high-elevation wetland ecosystem called a páramo on the hunt for a unique bee species: Bombus funebr...
NPR •

Mobile home residents band together to keep trailer parks affordable

On a Saturday morning in the ski town of Durango, Colo., a family of five lounges in their pajamas inside a small, rectangular mobile home. This is the trailer Verónica and her family have called home for almost a decade. Down a narrow hallway, there are a couple of closet-sized bedrooms and a small bathroom with a cheerful gnome shower curtain. But the open-floor-plan living room-meets-kitchen is the preferred hangout space. Right now, a kid's cartoon blares on the TV. "To the outside world...
The World from PRX •

How a historic ‘magical bean’ is helping Indigenous groups in Colombia

It’s lunchtime for students at the only school in the small village of Ishashimana, Colombia. Students chow down on plates of rice and lentils at long tables in the cafeteria. This meal will help power the school’s 1,800 pupils through the rest of their day of exams. Although lentils take center stage today, another legume traditional to the Indigenous Wayuu people who live in this region put the small town of Ishashimana and its school on the map. “We worked with the Guajiro bean,” the Ishashim...
The World from PRX •

Cut to USAID funding affects rural regions of Colombia

Kevin Rivadeneira leans over the side of a canoe floating in the Laguna Grande, or Great Lake. He points toward a flock of pink birds in the distance. “Check out the flamingos,” Rivadeneira said in Spanish.Indeed, hundreds of pink flamingos bob in the salty water. This is why thousands of tourists come to the Flora and Fauna Flamingo Sanctuary in Colombia’s remote La Guajira region every year. Rivadeneira runs a local eco-tourism agency here called Perlaguaneque. Since 2020, he’s worked with a t...
The World from PRX •

Companies pursuing renewable energy development in Colombia must work with Indigenous communities

Between high wind speeds and lots of sunlight, La Guajira — a desert region along Colombia’s Caribbean coast — is considered one of the world’s most promising locations for wind and solar energy projects. Dozens of renewable energy projects are at various stages of development in the region, and at least 40 wind farms are projected to begin operations within the next decade. Currently, only one 10-turbine wind farm is operating.Felipe Gonzalez Penagos, the La Guajira regional manager for Colombi...
NPR •

Cuts to federal grants affecting even non-profits that don't get them

Three times a week, Armando Guardiola wakes in the bleary morning hours and pulls on his clothes. The retired railroad worker traipses around his yellow ranch-style home in Commerce City, Colorado, making last-minute preparations before a public shuttle arrives. He's heading to an early shift, and he can't be late — his life depends on it. By 7:30 a.m., Guardiola is at a kidney dialysis clinic in Westminster. The 71-year-old spends hours at a time here, in a room where close to 20 strangers...
Colorado Public Radio •

How Latino seniors are beating loneliness in Denver

Three times a week, Armando Guardiola wakes in the bleary morning hours and pulls on his clothes. The retired railroad worker traipses around his yellow ranch-style home in Commerce City making last-minute preparations before a public shuttle arrives.He’s heading to an early shift, and he can’t be late — his life depends on it.By 7:30 a.m., Guardiola is at a kidney dialysis clinic in Westminster. The 71-year-old spends hours at a time here, in a room where close...
KUNC •

New to gardening? Find your green thumb by starting small

The phrase "gardening season" may bring a few images to mind: large beds of colorful wildflowers… rows of neatly staked tomato plants… big bags of mulch stacked up against the side of the house. Or perhaps your mental image of gardening looks a little more modest. As in, potted herbs growing on a windowsill. That's the case for KUNC digital producer Natalie Skowlund. She recently decided to research and write an introduction to gardening for novices. And she lives in an apartment, so she wanted t...
KUNC •

Young musicians give Mexican folk music new life at Denver mariachi conference

On a rainy Friday in Denver, Esmeralda Cuevas-Lara stands in a classroom at Metropolitan State University holding a water bottle to her lips in place of a microphone. As a few other students sit in desks watching, Cuevas-Lara belts out lyrics from the Mexican mariachi ballad “El Herradero.”“Ay, qué linda, qué rechula las fiestas de mi rancho…,” she sings in Spanish.Cuevas-Lara moved to Longmont from Guanajuato, Mexico when she was 15 years old. The song, she said, brings her back there.“This is...
KUNC •

Boulder County’s new higher minimum wage could make a dent, but workers say it’s ‘not enough’

Conor Hall takes pride in his knowledge of food. Each workday, he answers customers’ questions about which cheeses to pair with a particular salami, or what it means for a ham to be “uncured.”Hall is an assistant deli manager at a King Soopers grocery story in Boulder. His shifts vary, sometimes forcing him to be up as early as 3 a.m. while other times he closes out the evening. Hall makes around $23 per hour now, well above the local minimum wage, but it hasn’t always been that way. When he sta...
KUNC •

'Mother of the Colorado Trail' highlighted in new archive

On a sunny Monday in March, Grace Marx unpacks gear from the back of a car at the remote South Platte River trailhead outside of Conifer, Colorado. She’s preparing for a three-day backpacking trip with her husband and two young kids. The trailhead where Marx and her family will embark serves as one of many starting points for the Colorado Trail, a 567-mile high-altitude wilderness path that traverses eight mountain ranges between Denver and Durango.Marx’s family isn’t new to the Colorado Trail....
Cronkite News •

Doulas could be an answer to Arizona’s maternal mortality crisis

TEMPE – Leah Goldmann lounges on a sofa with her legs crisscrossed and a pillow cradled on her lap. She listens as Latisa Ratliff goes over birth plans, prenatal dietary considerations and how to know when it’s time to head to the hospital for labor.
Goldmann is pregnant with a girl, with an expected due date in January. It’s an exciting – and anxious – time for Goldmann, who at 33 years old will become a first-time mom.

But for Ratliff, the work is her bread and butter. As a birth doula, Rat...