Your donation will support a MEDICINAL PLANT DEMONSTRATION GARDEN and WORKSHOPS to teach rural Maya girls and women how to grow and use Maya traditional medicinal plants to manage menstrual pain. Cultural knowledge and local medicinal plants for women's menstrual pain management is a necessary component of formal and informal health education for rural girls and women.
Few rural Maya women and girls have the opportunity to go to a clinic for health care. They depend on traditional knowledge passed down from their mothers and local midwives. Medicinal plants are an important component of that care. Women's health education needs to include knowledge of traditional healing herbs, how to identify them in the wild, and how to grow them and prepare the correct dosages for menstrual pain management.
This is a joint effort: Seeds for a Future will provide training in all the necessary gardening skills. AMACHAJUL will host the demonstration garden & workshops at their CASA Education Center in Chajul, Quiche, Guatemala. Maya Health Alliance will provide consultative medical support. The major teaching resource will be their highly respected text, Plantas Medicinales y Enfermedades Comunes by Peter Rohoff and Magda Salz Mux. Workshops will be taught in the indigenenous Maya Ixil language.
Seeds for a Future's partner NGO, AMACHAJUL, will produce a Spanish language digital curriculum guide for women's health care workers and volunteers in the community based on the Maya Health Alliance book. Drawings or photos and text will instruct how to identify, grow and use traditional medicinal plants for managing menstrual pain. The digital copy will be available free in PDF.
