Posts Tagged ‘Agroecology’
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
I visited two communities today, El Carmen and Chi Armira, that both work with APROSADSE’s Agroecology Program. They were both groups that had received microcredit from APROSADSE for the first time.
The first group is based in the small community of El Carmen in the village Varituc. There are 30 families that live in this community. The community is about 20 minutes by car from APROSADSE’s office in San Martín Jilotepéque, the nearest town, making it quite isolated. Varituc has a reputation for migration. A lot of its men have migrated to the United States in search of better opportunities for their families. This is a profound loss as not only does this break up families, but the remaining family usually has a debt to pay, which are the fees for the husband to leave.
We met a group of 13 women who were participating in APROSADSE’s programs. Four of them received microcredit for a cow-raising project. Patrociña was the one who spoke the most and at one point said, “Please excuse my fellow women peers, who are too shy to talk today.”
Patrociña has a very optimistic personality. You wouldn’t think that she was missing her husband. He left ten months ago, leaving her behind with their five children to find more opportunities to sustain his family from the United States. Patrociña is one of the two women who go to APROSADSE to attend the health training workshops. They come back to share what they learn with the rest of the group. Patrociña says she has benefited from the cow-raising project since it has helped pay for her children’s education and has provided milk for them to drink.
In the next community of Chi Armira, we visited a group income-generating project that is raising 600 egg-laying hens. Chi Armira is much closer to San Martín Jilotepéque and so people have access to the local market. This group of four members has been working with this project for a while, initially another organization was supporting them and there were 13 people in the group. But most women left after the first year because their husbands didn’t allow them to work with the group because it required too much of their time. Who would cook them dinner?
The President of this group has been on her own with her two children for ten years since her husband left for the United States. She mentions how her husband wouldn’t like to see her working with a group but she likes it, so she’s doing it anyway. They have had challenges with this project because the cost of the chicken feed is very high right now. They’re hoping to sell the hens in three or four months to earn income, which they will reinvest in the project.
As we walked towards the chicken coop I saw a mother hen with lots of chicks everywhere running around. I tried to pick one of them up to check how they were doing but they ran so fast. The mother hen was did a good job protecting them and it became quite a challenge. But when the coast was clear I caught one! They were very healthy. One of the group members said I could take two of them with me, but I told her it might be hard to take chicks with me on the plane.
Clearly the APROSADSE’s Agroecology Program offers communities an opportunity to enhance community’s nutrition, develop agroecology skills and improve income for their families.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia
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
Gladys and Lupita of CIAM
On the outskirts of San Cristóbal lies the office of El Centro de Investigación y Acción de la Mujer Latinoamericana (Latin American Women’s Center for Research and Action, or CIAM), one of IDEX’s catalyst grantees. Even the taxi had a difficult time to find this place but once I arrived, I found myself in a beautiful house where CIAM’s staff is busy working with different rural development programs for improving women’s quality of life.
Gladys, CIAM’s Director of Programs and Lupita, the Financial Administrator, sat down with me to talk about their organization. Unfortunately, the field staff could not accompany us as they were busy working in different meetings that day.
Gladys shared with me the programs at CIAM, which all integrate a genders lens and a holistic approach. The 4 main programs are: Health, Agroecology, Women’s Issues and Human Rights. A fifth program is in progress which will concentrate on researching these four thematic issues to facilitate even better their discussions with community members.
CIAM works in 3 areas in two states in Chiapas (Amatan and Hiutiupan), bordering the state of Tabasco, a very neglected area. It takes a day to drive there. However, once a month, the field staff (in charge of health, agroecology and women’s issues) drives there together to stay for almost a week, during which they give workshops to these communities on the issues mentioned in the parenthesis. After their week, they return to CIAM’s office to evaluate how it went and then use that evaluation to improve their training for the next month.
“Why did you choose to work with these states in Chiapas, especially since they are so far away?” I asked Gladys.
“These areas used to be filled with coffee plantations and the coffee there used to be exported. In 2000, the price of coffee went down globally and at the same time, a strong plague attacked the plantations, leaving the people in these communities in a difficult crisis. As a result, they need so much support now, especially since they are in an inaccessible area.
Also, the cultural trends that existed on these plantations have continued today within the families. For example, there still is the tradition of women being stolen at 13 or 14 years old to get married to the man who stole her. Another example is how daughters are being sold today for a sack of sugar and other foods.”
“What?! That still exists?” I was shocked!
“Yes, in the 21st century, those customs still exist today and not many people know about it.”
If you can’t even imagine how these customs work, I highly recommend you to watch the movie “Like Water For Chocolate.” At least that’s they way I can picture these traditions.
Gladys continued:
“There’s also a need to preserve the Zoque culture. Its identity is being lost as the new generation don’t want to speak the Zoque language anymore. Instead, they want to celebrate the Spanish holidays and we have seen many of them consuming high amounts of alcohol. This is a reason why we are emphasizing now workshops on “masculinity” where we bring men together to talk about their role in the community and how they perceive women to bring more awareness on gender equity.”
In spite of being an organization that works on low economic resources, CIAM is very organized in terms of their planning and evaluation. Each January, CIAM’s staff plans their activities for the entire calendar year! In order to schedule these activities, CIAM sends the communities they work with a questionnaire that will tell CIAM what are the issues requested so that CIAM can plan for workshops that address the community’s needs. What I really like is that their plan depends mostly on what is requested by the communities.
But my favorite aspect of CIAM is what they have done with their human rights program. CIAM has created a 3-year school program that has a focus on leadership development and invites 30 women from different social organizations to participate to become better leaders for themselves and their communities. The school started in 2004 and currently, they are about to start the second generation of graduates this fall.
I had hoped to visit one of their workshops but that was not possible, given that I will not be here when they have their next workshop. In any case, I could tell from my conversation with CIAM´s staff, and the photos and materials they showed me the hard work that CIAM is doing to support women and neglected communities in Chiapas.
Kat
