Ambassador Mullee visits cocoa project and joins whale festival
Ambassador Patrick Mullee visits cocoa bean project and names a whale Shakespeare, in Manabí province
Ambassador Patrick Mullee in Puerto López
This weekend was full of activities for Ambassador Patrick Mullee who visited the Manabí province. On Friday 19th June he visited a project supported by the British Embassy Quito aimed at empowering cocoa bean farmers in the Coaque community. The idea behind this project was to train local farmers to give them the skills and knowledge in order to be able to manage the post-harvesting processes and a stocking centre in Quinindé. This initiative hopes to give farmers more capabilities to scale up the value chain and have access to fair prices.
On Saturday 20th June, Ambassador Mullee was invited by the local council of Puerto López to the 17th Festival of Hunchback Whales. With the recent start of the whale season, the British Embassy was asked to join other authorities in adopting and naming a whale, which Ambassador Mullee called Shakespeare after the prestigious leading figure in literature, William Shakespeare, whose 400th death anniversary is being commemorated next year. The programme started with whale watching, and various other cultural presentations throughout the day. In the evening, Ambassador Mullee donated a couple of Shakespeare plays for the local library and was presented with a certificate.
On Monday 22nd June, Ambassador Mullee met with local authorities, including the Assembly member from Manabí, Carlos Bergmann. He also met with Cielo Mendoza, Regional Technical Director of ECU 911 in Manabí, and local media.