Growth in APROSADSE

I left Guatemala City today to travel 1 hour into the highlands to the state of Chimaltenango where I wended up a long winding road to San Martín Jilotepéque. I was visiting APROSADSE, an organization that IDEX has been supporting for over 3 years now, and who has focused its programs on health, education and agroecology. When I arrived, I was invited to talk with 3 of APROSADSE's Board members to discuss the work of APROSADSE and the Board’s participation.

It's Nicomedes second year of being President of APROSADSE Board, but he has been participating in their programs for 25 years! A married man with 3 daughters, Nicomedes recognizes the positive impact APROSADSE has had on him. As a child he only finished fourth grade before he had to find work to help support his family. When he was a grown adult, he saw that APROSADSE was offering a long-distance education program for people over 15 years old to finish primary and secondary education. He took the opportunity and completed his secondary education. He's happy that he completed that education program and now he works as one of the health promoters in his community.

Perfecta and Marta were the two other Board members present, one a midwife and the other a health promoter, like Nicomedes. Marta, a single mother, was also inspired to participate in the long-distance education program, but only completed the 7th grade "due to circumstances of life," However, her training in health, provided by APROSADSE, was enough to help her find a job as an assistant nurse in a health clinic in Antigua, a popular tourist spot relatively close to Chimaltenango. Now she has returned to San Martín Jilotepéque to work with the Ministry of Health. What does she do there? Well, there is only one doctor who travels once a month to her community. They are called mobile doctors. For the rest of the month Marta is the doctor in her community.

Perfecta hasn't been able to go to school. Instead, she has been focusing on her work as a midwife to her community in the village of Varituc. As a Board member, she comes to all the training workshops that APROSADSE offers including health and agroecology. The health trainings have really helped the quality of her work as midwife. She received a midwife kit that APROSADSE distributed through their health program, which she is grateful for because now she has the proper tools to do her job.

Two years ago, when IDEX visited APROSADSE, the health program was just restarting (after a long period of hiatus) and served only 22 communities. Now they help 130 communities. Almost all the communities within San Martín Jilotepéque! Last year they trained 80 health promoters and 66 midwifes. In addition, they offered training in nutrition to 18 groups of 270 participants from the communities. They've been also strengthening their relationship with San Martin's health center to serve many more people in the town. One of the things that impressed me was that they remodeled their warehouse in the basement into a day care center so that the mothers can bring their children to APROSADSE's office when they want to attend training.

Not only a midwife, Perfecta is able to help her community with livestock rearing and some agriculture projects. Even though she does not work in agroecology herself, she can still help community members due to her knowledge that she acquired by attending to the agroecology workshops at APROSADSE. Last year, APROSADSE was able to train 22 agroecology promoters from 13 communities. Agroecology focuses on livestock rearing and transitioning from conventional farming to organic farming. APROSADSE also has a veterinary store at their office, which serves 416 people from 32 communities in curing animals, providing treatment and selling medicine at affordable prices.

In addition to the long-distance education program that Nicomedes and Marta participated in, APROSADSE has a scholarship program. They gave scholarships to 137 students last year to study primary and secondary education. Another activity APROSADSE carries out is a "summer" program (summer here is from October to December) to 181 secondary school students, giving classes on a range from subjects such as environment, micro-enterprise and sexual transmitted diseases. Like FUNDAESPRO, APROSADSE also involves the parents, and have met with 80 parents 10 times last year to talk about different subjects such as nutrition, environment, interpersonal relations, pregnancy, etc.

Through their agroecology program APROSADSE implements a microcredit initiatives, where they promote group savings and facilitate monthly technical assistance to each group. When APROSADSE distributes microcredit to a group, it does it in one of two ways:
1) Provide microcredit to a group for a group income-generating project; or
2) Provide microcredit to a group, but for individual income-generating projects.

APROSADSE also supports individual microcredit outside of a group, these are approved by the Board. They target community members who can't form a group in their community yet want to receive a microcredit to carry out an agroecology related income-generating project, usually after attending APROSADSE's workshops. One of the great things about APROSADSE is that their workshops are open to everyone, and that's how many people come to learn about APROSADSE's other programs.

These are not all the activities that APROSADSE is carrying out, but already this can show how they've grown since the last time that IDEX visited them. I'm looking forward to meeting the people that benefited from these programs when I start my community visits tomorrow.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia

Health, Housing, and Painting the Town Red

I woke up early today to visit a community near the city of Patulul in the state of Escuintla, about 2 hours southwest of Guatemala City. ISMU was taking me to a community called Canton Luciana where around 145 families were living near a latex rubber plantation.

ISMU was invited to come to the community to carry out a needs assessment survey to see where they can best support these families. The two crucial areas that needed to be addressed the most was the improvement of housing and health issues.

A previous government program had started training 5 women in this community to become health monitors. However, the government program only trained them in children's health, and not any of the diseases that afflicted adult community members such as diarrhea and respiratory health issues that could be prevented. As a result, ISMU coordinated a series of preventative health workshops to train health monitors. Trainings included a practical workshop to make herbal shampoos, creams and cough syrups.

ISMU also organized the visit of an expert to come to the community to teach and facilitate themes requested by the community such as conflict resolution.

For the longest time there was a conflict between two families that had been a caused by a community member's chicken trespassing to the neighbor's garden to eat some flowers. No one knew the origin of this conflict until the conflict resolution workshop. By facilitating the discussion the community members learned how to express themselves better and resolve these conflicts sooner rather than later.

Another requested topic to be addressed was sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS. In most communities in Guatemala, HIV/AIDS is still a taboo subject. When someone dies of HIV/AIDS, people will usually not reveal the true cause of death. Instead, they'll say the person died of severe bronchitis, or any other illness that exacerbated the HIV/AIDS patient. The health monitors did request specifically to have this theme be taught separately for a group of women, men and youth.

These talks in general were considered a success, as more than 100 people attended each session. The session with the worst turnout still attracted 75 people. More people would have come, but it was raining. After these sessions, the health monitors follow-up with private conversations with the community members to see if they had more questions or comments about the topic.

ISMU also addressed was the housing improvements. ISMU hired an architecture to design blueprints for a 42 meter squared house that was both affordable and utilized as much space as possible. ISMU then coordinated with FONAVI (National Fund for Housing in Guatemala) to fund this project. FONAVI finally agreed to provide funding but had some strict requirements including collecting paperwork of each family who wanted to be part of this project. At first, the community members didn't believe that this project would happen and didn't bother to get their paperwork together. But once they saw many families applying, people started to find their paperwork. As a result ISMU improved a total of 91 houses.

One curious requirement that FONAVI asked for was that the roof of each of the new houses would be painted red, so that when the governor would fly on his jet plane, he could see all the houses he helped construct through FONAVI, and thus, feel proud of himself. Really, I'm not kidding!

Tomorrow I leave Guatemala City and head to the highlands to visit APROSADSE.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia

ISMU's Day-Care Facilities

Today I visited 2 day-care centers supported by ISMU and one of its member organizations, FUNDAESPRO. Each day care facility is in high demand and caters to 30 children from 7am to 5pm.

The first one is located in Tierra Nueva, a community considered "high-risk" in terms of security and is suffering from a lack of access to potable water. Many of the single mothers in the community work in one of the maquiladoras in Guatemala City. The day care center has been essential for these mothers, as they can now leave the children in a safe space where they'll receive education, learn about hygiene habits and also be given a balanced meal.

Without the day care center, the parents have few alternatives and fear that without proper care their children could be exposed to abuse and gang violence that is unfortunately prevalent in some of these marginalized urban areas.

The parents recognize the importance of the day care center and on their weekends they are helping to remodel the kitchen. They are currently replacing the wooden walls with solid cement block walls, which will protect the kitchen equipment from theft. The day care center itself was made of wooden walls, but thanks to funds sent by IDEX, the walls are now built with cement blocks, which enhances safety and makes for better decoration inside the day care center.

The second day care center was located in Mezquital, a huge community in the marginalized areas of Guatemala City, near a popular bus station. The day care center is in front of a local market, making it nearly invisible among the crowds of people. I saw a man with a gun next to the entrance and I asked, "Does this place have its own bodyguard?"

"No, those are private bodyguards people hire when they want their car to be protected. It's very common for cars to be stolen here." An ISMU staff member replied.

We entered a beautiful pink room, where all the children were running around screaming with their fireman hats on. The day care center in Mezquital used to be very small and dark, but now I entered a large, spacious, well-lit room. IDEX supported this expansion, which now includes an extra room, bathrooms and a secure patio space.

Both day care centers are full of decorations and interactive toy "corners" where children can have access to an educational playtime. FUNDAESPRO has developed a manual to run these day care centers, which includes material for pre-primary education. There used to be no materials for this age group until FUNDAESPRO published this manual. They have now submitted this to the Ministry of Education, which recognized its value, reprinted it, and has made it accessible nationwide.

FUNDAESPRO ensures that parents are involved in their children’s educational and development, and invite the parents to meet once a month to discuss different issues these children can face, like domestic violence. FUNDAESPRO has seen the positive changes in the parent's attitudes. When they see the parents come to the first meeting, their usual comment is: "Feel free to hit my child, if s/he is behaving badly." And FUNDAESPRO say, "No, that's not the way to treat a child." Over time, after the monthly meetings have run their course, the parents start getting more involved with the day care center and will help out, as the parents from Tierra Nueva did by spending their weekend time in remodeling the kitchen.

Once they're old enough to go to primary school, FUNDAESPRO will follow-up with that child until the third grade. In almost all the cases, these students are doing great and achieve good grades.

Just leaving the day care centers, one can see the harsh realities these children face every day with the lack of security and the bad infrastructure of the community. I feel so grateful that people are on the lookout for these children, and are ensuring that they are getting a real chance to enjoy their childhood, as free as they can.

Photo Credit: Marlon Garcia

ISMU - Building Communities

Today, I went to visit one of IDEX's oldest partners, ISMU, based in Guatemala City. ISMU works with 22 communities from 7 regions/states, benefiting around 35,000 people. ISMU was founded in 1992 to strengthen community-based organizations in marginalized urban areas by building community organizational skills, encouraging active participation in the communities and stimulating leadership among community members. In this way, ISMU has allied itself with several community-based organizations that are now known as ISMU's member organizations. Now ISMU has grown its impact over 15 years later, focusing on 4 different areas: job training, education, community capacity-building and housing.

In the morning I met with ISMU staff and current Board Members. Each Board Member represents a different member organization and they, together with the staff, took turns in updating me on ISMU programs.

Last year, ISMU went through a strategic plan phase where they analyzed their strengths, weaknesses and their overall work in the communities. During this process, the Board Members would meet once a week (twice, if needed) to go over the programs together. Due to these regular meetings, the Board members became more united and were encouraged to become more involved in ISMU's work.

ISMU's Job Training program focuses on supporting small community business initiatives in different ways. One example is the training ISMU offers to community members, particularly women, to learn a simple skill that will help them make a product from home and can generate income. One of the Board Members is the trainer of the arts and crafts training program, where she just finished training 40 women on creating handmade cards. This training was hugely successful as women were able to start selling cards in time for Valentine's Day. Not only that, 10 of the women have replicated this training with other women in their communities.

Another way ISMU supports this program is through its microcredit program. ISMU has 55 people from 5 community groups actively participating in this program. ISMU provides a microcredit loan to each group member and supports the group by meeting with them once a month to offer training or to facilitate discussions on different themes such as self-esteem, conflict-resolution and adolescent issues, among others. Even though there is a peer-support approach for each group to repay the microcredit, each member is responsible for going to the bank to deposit their loan repayment. Thus, ISMU staff doesn’t collect the money, just the deposit slips. In this way, it builds responsibility and ownership among the group members.

In its Education program, ISMU is supporting almost 200 students from over 13 communities with scholarships. These scholarships cover tuition fees, school supplies, uniforms and transportation fees for those who live very far away from their nearest schools. ISMU shared with me that their scholarship program is different to the traditional scholarship, as they're not given based on good grades, but on the families' harsh living conditions of extreme poverty. So they don't want the program to be just about completing each child's studies, but to also integrate it with youth development activities to address challenges these students face in their daily lives once they leave school and go back home.

After the strategic planning phase, a new project emerged for ISMU's Community Capacity-Building program, which is to develop a group of monitors. The monitors will be community members representing one of ISMU's programs in one of the communities where they work. These monitors will be the link between ISMU and the communities. ISMU realized that one of its weaknesses was not being able to best identify the needs of the communities, and thus, the monitor will be trained and encouraged to detect these needs to then work together with ISMU to address this issue. Bringing this group of monitors together will facilitate a space and moment for all to exchange information, ideas and share suggestions to best address the challenges in their communities.

Last, but not least, ISMU is hoping with their Housing program to improve the living conditions of families living in extreme poverty. When ISMU goes into the communities, one of the issues they evaluate are housing conditions. ISMU met with Catalina Mendoza from the community of La Verbena who lives in a 3 by 3 meter square room, just enough space to fit a bed. How many people live in that room? You ask. Five people! When ISMU heard about this situation, they started working with community members on how to improve it, and are currently negotiating with Catalina's neighbors to allow them to extend her space onto their lands to give her a better living condition. This is just one of many examples of how ISMU is impacting in their housing program.

In addition to these programs, ISMU is always finding ways to collaborate with different organizations to better support the communities. A recent collaboration with OXFAM GB and ESFRA has ISMU focusing on responses to natural disasters. Disaster relief often overlooks a plan for rehabilitation. Once the disaster has struck and the victim is out of immediate danger, there is no process to rehabilitate and support that person to rebuild his or her life. ISMU is hoping to change that by providing the appropriate training to different community members who can lead this response in the event of a disaster.

ISMU's work isn't easy at all. On top of that, ISMU staff risk their lives by traveling to these communities, as the security in Guatemala has worsened in the past few years. But ISMU feels strongly about continuing its work in these areas because these communities need the most support. And in spite of all the dangers, one can sense that this has not stopped the community members from working hard to improve their lives and that of their children.

Katherine

Bagels in Guatemala City

Katherine Zavala, IDEX's Coordinator of Programs is traveling again. This time Katherine is visiting our partners in Guatemala: AFEDES, APROSADSE, and ISMU. Catch up with her news on our blog.

Sunday, April 13

Today I arrived at Guatemala City to start my two-week site visit trip to visit three of IDEX partners in Guatemala. I was quite the zombie, as I had taken the traditional red-eye flight from San Francisco to Central America. The airport at Guatemala was a shock as it has been largely expanded since the last time I was here and it took forever to get to the immigration stop. Being a zombie, I was so out of it that when I got to the immigration officer I had not filled any form (nor had I received them, as I was probably skipped by the flight attendant who hands out these forms because I was dead asleep!). Fortunately, unlike other immigration officers I know, the officer was nice and gave me a moment to fill everything in.

It was only 10am by the time I arrived at my Bed and Breakfast (B&B), which turned out to be very cozy and very clean. This is the first time I've stayed in this area, so I decided to check it out and walked to the nearest mall.

Hanging out at the mall wasn't really how I wanted to spend my first day in Guatemala. But there I was with my cappuccino and bagel.

Walking back to my B&B, I past some of the chain hotels and chain fast food restaurants. McDonalds was two blocks away from my B&B, so ultimately it became my place for dinner.

But in spite of all these American businesses, I can tell that I'm in a different environment. It's really nice to be back in Central America. I can't wait to visit our partners!

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