IDEX in Nepal: Lasting Solutions to Poverty

At IDEX's event on June 10, we screened a couple of films about our work, both of these multimedia pieces are also available for viewing on our website.

Watch both the Bangladesh and Nepal films on our site click here.

Or you can see the Nepal multimedia piece on YouTube at youtube.com/user/IDEXorg.

Let us know what you think and post a comment.

IDEX to Screen Maquilapolis

IDEX invites you to join us for a special screening of the acclaimed movie Maquilapolis [city of factories], a film by Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre.

A benefit for IDEX's Programs, the screening will feature women factory workers on the U.S- Mexico border where many multinational corporations have factories. Jobs are available, but salaries are low, labor violations plentiful, and the environmental devastation is shocking. Find out how workers are mobilizing to end these abusive practices.

Come watch their inspiring stories, and stay for a short post-film slideshow about similar efforts supported by IDEX in Guatemala. IDEX will host a reception with appetizers and drinks before the film.

Attend the screening for a chance to win a selection of books from Lonely Planet!

When: Thursday, September 27th, 6:30pm -9:30pm (6:30 reception, 7:15 movie, 8:30 discussion)
Where: The Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight Street, San Francisco.
Tickets: $15-50 recommended donation (no-one turned away for lack of funds), includes appetizers and beverages.
RSVP: To reserve your ticket visit www.idex.org/maquilapolis.html, email maquilapolis@idex.org, or call (415) 824-8384.

Final Thoughts From Chiapas

Today I had my last site visit of my trip and for that I had to travel one-hour south to Comitan. Comitan is where the organization Educación por la Paz (Education for Peace) more often called EduPaz was founded ten years ago, focusing primarily on supporting Guatemalan refugees in Chiapas. Now EduPaz has evolved to an organization that focuses mainly on 2 areas: health and economic development though microcredit.

EduPaz's health program is focused on mental health as they felt that the issue of addressing people's traumas after having lived through a conflict was missing in many indigenous communities. Maria Elena, the director of EduPaz's health program, studied Gestalt therapy when she was in Argentina years ago and now has shared her knowledge with other community members to provide a space for families who need more psychological support.

Jose, an indigenous man who comes from a community that speaks Tojolabal, manages the economic development program. He is the son of indigenous farmers who used to work on a large finca back in the day. He told me how when he used to be a young boy of 8 years old that he would talk Tojolabal with all the other children on the finca and that his father would discourage him from doing so and told him he should only speak Castilla (Spanish). So he did and he lost most of his Tojolabal until he was in his 20s and when he began interacting with Tojolabal-speakers outside of the finca and gained it all back. Now, as director of the microcredit project in EduPaz, he speaks Tojoloba all the time.

EduPaz has a more personalized way in managing its microcredit program than many other non-profit organizations. Before a group of community members can receive microcredit, EduPaz will have a dialog with them 3 times to make sure everyone understands the conditions and why these conditions exist. All members of the group have to become responsible for the group members to pay back their loans. A board of directors is selected and then Jose, with the support of Javier, EduPaz's executive director, will check one by one all the microcredit proposals and budgets to ensure that the proposed income-generating project will be guaranteed a positive result.

EduPaz will also assist the groups by providing financial administration training to each group. But they do not organize workshops and then ask people to come. Instead, they go to each of the groups they work with, one by one, and give each group the necessary training to build everyone's capacity to administer their loans.

Before, EduPaz used to offer many workshops such as training in agroecology and seminars on NAFTA and the World Bank but they discovered that not many would attend and people were just not interested. They decided to stop offering the workshops and focus on giving more personal attention to each group.

EduPaz's office includes a collective store on the first floor where group members involved in the microcredit program can sell their products. The store is focused on offering products that are both organically made and qualify as fair trade. The main product they sell is organic coffee as EduPaz has given a microcredit to organic coffee collectives.

EduPaz has only three staff members and all of them are constantly traveling, mostly to the communities in the Zona Selva and Fronteriza, that border with Guatemala. In spite of the small staff they seem to be covering lots of neglected areas and the advantage of having a Tojolabal native on staff makes a lot of difference.

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After finishing this visit, I feel sad and happy that my work in Chiapas has been completed. I am sad to leave Chiapas as this has been a magical place to be and for me it has been quite an eye-opening experience where I have witnessed the hard work that is being done on the ground with the financial support IDEX has provided. This is a place where you can meet many activists, many community members and people living with another type of government. I am happy to be able take all that I saw and learned back with me to San Francisco to do a better job in raising more funds and working harder to make my small contribution to supporting the various groups that IDEX supports there.

I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my trip and has encouraged you to visit Chiapas and/or learn more about the work that is being done there.

Until the next trip.... Peace out!

Kat

Trip to Morelia

I am sitting among the beautiful green trees and mountains. The sky is very clear today. You wouldn't have guessed that the night before Hurricane Dean had gone over the Yucatan peninsula.

I am waiting to meet the Good Governance Council (Junta de Buen Gobierno) in the caracol (regional center) of Morelia. I came in the morning with a group of 4 staff members of DESMI. They have been invited to give workshops to community members in agroecology, organic fertilizers, cooperative management and cattle rearing. I am here with Rosaluz from Enlace Civil to meet the Council members that are in charge of the plan of production (focusing on food security and arts and crafts). IDEX is supporting specifically the group of women artisans who are starting an autonomous cooperative to build the capacity to market their textile products.

Each caracol has its own security commission, which receives every guest who enters the premises. They then make an appointment with the Council. I am already participating in this alternative governance system.

Right now it seems that there is a conflict that has occurred in a nearby municipality and it is taking the Council a long time to resolve. I might not get to meet the Council before lunch.

After some beans and tortillas...
The Council has received me and has asked me to explain the reason of my visit. They welcome me and tell me that this is my home too. They ask whether I have a space to spend the night and if I had eaten. It is nice to know that even though this is all a procedure that the communities have created, it feels like a genuine service to all people who enter this place.

I then went to meet a Commission of the plan of production, which includes IDEX's support to the artisans cooperative. The Commission has just formed as the plan is too big and required a separate commitment by the Council. It was an interesting dialogue where I explained what IDEX was and they told me about their plans and hopes for this project.

From the meeting I could instantly tell that this was a project that has ownership amongst the people themselves. This project was planned and initiated by them and now they are building their capacity to see the project through with the support of Enlace Civil. It is a constant support that encourages professional development as Enlace Civil helps them administratively such as guiding the financial administrator to practice Excel to track the funds.

These people have been chosen by the communities to be in this commission and Enlace Civil is giving them the basic skills to govern their people and to help them improve their quality of lives.

You can't come here and not feel that people have taken ownership of their own governance and that this is all done with the goal of providing a better future for their communities.

Microcredit in Chiapas

Katherine, with Toño, DESMI's Director

When I entered DESMI's office, I thought to myself, "I want to work here!" DESMI's office is in a beautiful colonial house with a huge garden, which they have owned since 1979. I knew several of DESMI's staff from my IDEX trip to Guatemala last year, so seeing them again felt like seeing old friends.

Sitting down with the staff on my office visit, DESMI taught me a lot about their programs, and specifically their microcredit program. DESMI works in 3 regional areas in Chiapas: North, South and Los Altos. Currently, they have one person managing each regional area but they are in a process of staff restructuring to see if there is a way to better facilitate the work in these areas by distributing the responsibility.

I found DESMI's microcredit program very interesting. DESMI's loan fund will only be distributed to collectives. The whole process from the moment the community applies for microcredit to receiving it may take 2 to 3 months, as DESMI wants to ensure that the microcredit they receive will guarantee success of their project. There hasn't been a case where DESMI has rejected an application. Instead, if something doesn't make sense or the application is not complete, DESMI's staff will take the time to visit the collective and work together on the application. Every first Monday of the month, DESMI's staff sits down together to look at all the applications. Since 2003, they have not received many applications.

DESMI expressed to me their excitement on the exchange trip they're doing next week together with K'inal Antsetik to visit IDEX's Guatemalan partners: AFEDES, APROSADSE and ISMU, as well as other organizations. They are planning to visit AFEDES' Weavers' Store in Santiago Sacatepequez and APROSADSE's agricultural program in Chimaltenango.

DESMI is hoping to learn especially how these organizations work with gender issues into their programs, since DESMI is also initiating their own workshops on masculinity. These exchange trips, organized by IDEX partners themselves, came about during IDEX's regional conference in Antigua, Guatemala in January 2006. IDEX's partners decided they wanted to exchange experiences as they saw that they all were facing similar challenges although living in different political and cultural contexts.

IDEX has been a long supporter of DESMI and it's easy to see why. DESMI is continually working to become more efficient in their site visits, training and in being more aware of the needs of the communities. DESMI is currently working on developing a monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure they are achieving the objectives they have set themselves to accomplish."It hasn't been successful yet, to be honest," Toño, DESMI's Director tells me, "but we are doing our best to get this plan together because we want to make sure that DESMI is working well to improve the quality of life of these communities."

Kat

Staying Power

August 11, 2007

Today, I sat down with the two operative staff members of COMPITCH, Ana and Juan Ignacio.

COMPITCH is integrated by 17 organizations with the objective to recover, defend and develop the practice of traditional medicine and knowledge of the indigenous community in Chiapas.

I had spent one day at its regional forum, and I was curious to see how just two people had planned such a large event.

Several representative leaders of the 17 organization members of COMPITCH were in the office to welcome me.

Don Arturo from the community of Margaritas asked me what I thought about the forum. I told him I was excited to have been there even if it was only one day, but I could already see the impact the gathering was making among the midwives present there. In addition, I'd enjoyed seeing how participative the midwives had been in their work groups.

Doña Francisca, another representative leader, said that actually this was the first time the forum had brought such a high level of participation because they were able to bring so many midwives. On other occasions, when COMPITCH tried to bring midwives together, they would get busy at the last minute because of women going into labor and would send community members instead. These members usually would not understand these gatherings and therefore, would not participate. This time, the midwives did come and thus, encouraged the constant dialogue among them.

From the brief conversation I had with these representative leaders, I noticed just two COMPITCH staff hadn't coordinated the forum, but it had been an enormous group effort from the 17 organizations that made the forum such a huge success. Without them, there would not have been the extensive outreach or planning for the forum to happen.

Talking to Ana and Juan Ignacio, demonstrated to me their depth of information in all biodiversity-related themes. They keep themselves updated on all the recent laws, actions, campaigns and research to be always prepared to protect natural resources.

COMPITCH's first priority is health for all communities - to the point that they will sacrifice their own salaries if it meant the money will help cure someone's sickness. COMPITCH is continually working and mobilizing to protect the indigenous culture, local biodiversity and the practice of traditional medicine in Chiapas. COMPITCH exists because the Mexican government is not encouraging these crucial elements to survive. Someone has to defend every citizen's right to healthcare, whether it is in the hospital or in nature.

At the office, Ana and Juan Ignacio are working seven days a week with few resources for this defense. I don't know how they manage but their determination to do the right thing, in spite of the odds, to ensure everyone's right to have good health is clear and inspiring. Money will not be an obstacle to them. Their work continues and one can be guaranteed that COMPITCH is not going to go away any time soon.

Katherine

Arriving in Chiapas

Katherine Zavala is IDEX's Programs Coordinator. Katherine is currently in Chiapas, Mexico visiting our long-term partners, DESMI and K'inal Antsetik, plus 5 new grantees, to meet with staff and the local communities and evaluate their progress.

August 9 2007:

As my flight left Mexico City today I saw endless buildings and houses below me. It was a beautiful sunny day to fly and I could see the diversity of bright colors from the buildings' rooftops. As the plane reached altitude, I saw the layer of snow on one of Mexico's famous volcanoes called Popocatépetl, rising just above the clouds.

One hour later, I see a completely different picture - large green patches of land everywhere! This was my first introduction to Chiapas.

Driving towards San Cristóbal de las Casas, the people I shared my taxi with fell asleep while we traveled through the green landscape, the fog and again through the green mountains as the sun shone through.

"What are those?" the lady next to me had woken up.
"Those are milpas [cornfields]," I said. There were miles of them!
"Maize, correct?"
"Yes, if you prefer it that way."

After an hour of thinking I was heading towards Emerald City, we came upon the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas.

August is high season for foreign travelers, especially from Europe and the US, so finding a place to stay was not so easy. But I finally found a room in a posada just north of the zócalo (central plaza). As I walked with my suitcases to the posada, a new friend I made accompanied me. She had originally tried to help me find another posada but apparently, it no longer existed. We passed a group of indigenous women and children on our way. One of the women was wearing a black woolen skirt or "fur" skirt with a fairly plan white blouse. "Than woman is from San Juan Chamula," my friend tells me, "see the skirt."

I know I have just arrived but I have yet to see many indigenous people. I feel I have been here before, though this is my first time to San Cristóbal and I haven't had time to explore this beautiful colonial town. But I think that feeling is related to how close this place looks to Antigua, Guatemala.

Tomorrow, I'll be going to the outskirts of San Cristóbal to a training center called CIDECI, place that helps indigenous communities by coordinating seminars and meetings there. One of IDEX's catalyst grantees, COMPITCH, is having its final day of its regional forum for indigenous midwives of Chiapas. I can't wait to be there!

Katherine