Empower 350 Indigenous Youth in Guatemala

Between August and November 2025, and with the 60 dollars raised through GlobalGiving, our team at Atz’umak Center focused on an essential mission: preparing the learning spaces where future youth leaders will grow. While funds were limited this quarter, we used them carefully to strengthen the foundations of our agroecology training areas, ensuring everything is ready for the moment we can resume full youth workshops.

During this period, our staff, together with a small group of committed core youth, worked on expanding and improving the organic garden areas that serve as practical teaching spaces. With your support, we built new raised beds, gathered organic and native seeds, and began small experimental plantings adapted to local conditions. These are modest steps but important ones. They ensure that when resources allow, young Mayan leaders will have vibrant, hands-on, nature-based learning spaces ready to welcome them.

Due to the broader funding cuts affecting international conservation programs, particularly the sudden halt of U.S. government support earlier this year, we were unable to host new workshops or involve larger youth groups during this period. Even so, our team has remained active, caring for the spaces, and keeping the program alive so that momentum is not lost. We continue nurturing the roots of a long-term vision that seeks to empower Indigenous youth to protect their ancestral rainforest and build dignified, sustainable livelihoods.

This work, even in its smallest steps, represents hope. It shows that preparation matters and that tending the soil, gathering seeds, and strengthening our teaching spaces today will allow young people to flourish tomorrow.

Your support makes this possible. Each contribution helps reopen workshops, revive training cycles, and offer opportunities to youth who want to care for their forests and contribute to the wellbeing of their communities. If you are able, we warmly invite you to share our project with others who believe in nature, community, and the power of young people.

Thank you for walking alongside us. Together, we are creating the conditions for young guardians to step forward, protect their rainforest, and shape a stronger future for their people and their land in harmony with the sacred cycles of Mother Nature.