Changes at AFEDES

After a restful Sunday walking around the beautiful colonial city of Antigua and falling in love again with traditional textiles shopping at the local market it was back to work on Monday.

I caught the bus near the local market that would take me to AFEDES, located in Santiago Sacatepéquez (45 minutes from Antigua). On the local buses in Guatemala, there is a driver and his assistant who collects the bus fare. I'm always surprised how fearless these assistants are because they stand right next to the front door, which is open, while the bus travels at 50 miles/hour. In my opinion the assistant is just asking to fall out.

Getting to Santiago takes two buses, a route that I'm very familiar with, as I was a volunteer with AFEDES in 2005. Already I can see changes in this city. There are shopping malls being built and the city feels bigger. My local doctor while I lived in Santiago is now the city's mayor! The biggest change of all is AFEDES, which has expanded to a new building that has three floors and so many offices that I kept getting lost.

Last year, AFEDES went through a strategic planning phase and as a result, have redefined their mission, vision and values, and have even changed their name. They are now called "Alliance to Foment Equality and Development by the Women of Sacatepéquez." Their acronym has remained AFEDES because it has already established credibility and value in the field.

2007 was an election year in Guatemala and AFEDES wanted to inform women about their right to vote and help them become more aware of the electoral process. This initiated AFEDES’ Advocacy program. Through this program AFEDES offered workshops on voting and the electoral process. They gave the workshops to 26 groups with an average attendance of 15 people. AFEDES also organized five workshops on leadership development focusing on activities that reflected on the political, social and economical context that rural women are living in today's Guatemala.

In addition to the Advocacy Program, AFEDES is currently running three other programs: Economic Development, Health, and their newest program, Education and Training for Personal Development.

Microcredit falls under the Economic Development program. AFEDES works with 27 groups of women that offer microcredit. One of the results of strategic planning was the need for AFEDES to redefine its microcredit groups so as to better encourage women to work collectively and establish their own self-sustainability.

Last year, AFEDES was able to provide seed funding to 31 women who wanted to start a community store stocked with day-to-day items. This project was a first-time experiment to support women from different communities who wanted to be part of a collective microenterprise, independent of AFEDES. The store has had challenges; over half of the women have dropped out, leaving behind 15 women to run the store. Nevertheless within one year of opening, the store has already broke even.

As a result of the Economic Development program, AFEDES was able to give out 80 scholarship loans to students of primary, secondary education and vocational school education.

A new area AFEDES is beginning to explore is transitioning women farmers working in conventional farming to sustainable agriculture. AFEDES has already participated in visiting sustainable agriculture projects, supported by FUNDEBASE, in San Martín Jilotepéque to start putting together a plan that will gradually support this transition.

AFEDES’ Health Program has added an interesting focus. AFEDES carried out a needs assessment survey to identify what services were in demand from its health program. Unfortunately, there was high response from women suffering from domestic violence. The women requested AFEDES work with men, to help change their attitudes. AFEDES knew that organizing a meeting for men would be difficult, so instead they targeted the one place where they knew men will always go, church. Women who responded to the survey would say, "My husband will hit me and then he'll go straight to church" or "My husband doesn't show up for household chores, but will loyally go to church." As a result, AFEDES is starting to build conversations with many fathers and priests in different communities to talk about this issue and are planning a religious/spiritual course with a woman's perspective, as most rural women are faithful religious practitioners.

In addition, AFEDES is also becoming involved with reported sexual violence cases by providing resources and support to women victims. AFEDES staff accompanies the women victims to the police, justice hall and anywhere they need to go to pursue their case.

Their newest program, Education and Training for Personal Development is in its inaugural year. It offers more formal training to AFEDES staff, Board members, and group leaders. Planned themes for this training are women's rights and cultural and ethnic identity, among others.

This year is marking a new chapter for AFEDES, where the goal is to stimulate women's empowerment. It's exciting to see where this will lead AFEDES and how this change will impact women in the communities of Sacatepéquez in the next few years.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia

Into the Wild, Guatemala Style

Last night I was so tired that I went to sleep really early, unfortunately I also had to wake up early, even though it was Saturday! This was my last day to visit communities with APROSADSE.

Our first visit was with a group called Women in Action (Mujeres de Acción) - who have been receiving microcredit loans from APROSADSE for quite some time now. On IDEX's last trip to Guatemala, I had visited this group, and some of the women recognized me! I sat down to talk about their work and how they feel about their participation in the group.

Many of the women here are new members, but five of them have been in the group since the beginning. Most of them are working individually with chicken-raising projects. Talking with them, the women offered several comments about their projects and how grateful they are to be in a group where they can share their problems and accomplishments and have support from one another.

Maximiliana, who is 47 years old and married with nine children, explained her biggest challenge was finding affordable chicken feed. This echoed comments given by a group member from the community of Chi Armira. Berta, whose project is quite big as she has 1,000 chickens, says that she's a bit worried now because some of her chickens seem to be getting ill and she needs to have a vet check them out.

Other stories were more positive like Maria Julia's story. Maria Julia has had great success with her egg-laying hens and now sells eggs in her community. She was invited to join the group by her mother-in-law and now she is the vice-president of the group, even though she has only been with the group two years. Being vice-president has encouraged her to speak up more and see that she can be one of the leaders of the group. Like today for example. The president of the group was unable to be present because she was studying, this allowed Maria Julia to open the meeting and introduce the group members.

Maria Julia's mother-in-law, Maria Elena, is one of the five women who started the group Women in Action. She's also had success raising chickens and local varieties of turkey. During Christmas time she can sell her turkeys at a high price and earn a good income from those sales. As a result Maria Elena has bought a cow that is providing her family with milk. Ever resourceful she also uses the chicken's waste to make organic fertilizers for her plot of agricultural land. I visited her at her home and on my way noticed the local primary school Los Pi ños Xesuj, also supported by APROSADSE, only through its education program.

After talking with the women, I said my thank you's and good-bye's and went on to my next visit.

I was driven on a long, unused road down to a small valley where I would meet Hector and the land where he cultivates his tomatoes, beans and corn. When I met Hector, he was approaching me with two boxes filled with tomatoes on his back, only supported by a cloth that was wrapped around his forehead.

I looked to see where Hector was coming from and was shocked. He had climbed up a narrow path along the edge of a cliff, where one false step could have lead to a horrible fall. Balance was hard enough to maintain with my own purple purse - can you imagine with two boxes of tomatoes tied to your head?

Hector showed me how he is transitioning to organic farming as he learned that it is both cheaper and more sustainable in the long run. He said to me,
"APROSADSE has been the one to show and teach me about organic agriculture and they've supported me with my first microcredit to invest in this project. I'm working hard to achieve my dream of having my own land to be able to support my family well and pay the education of my children. I also want to help contribute to community projects such as the school. I believe that we should support our community in any small way, because that is how we can improve our living situation."

There is a river that runs by his land and as a result, Hector has free access to water that helps to reduce his farming costs. I needed to cross the river to see his other land. Fortunately, the river was low since it is the dry season. I remembered the river scene from Into the Wild and I thought to myself, "I hope I can cross back." If I couldn't, then I guess I wouldn't have minded. The place was beautiful, surrounded by tall, green pine trees and dappled sunlight. Some of the pine trees had been carefully trimmed in order to allow sunlight to shine through to the land. Combined with the music of the river flowing by, it created a peaceful world away from the buses and typical urban noise.

It was a good way to end my field visits with APROSADSE.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia

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

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