Empower Maya Youth in a Post-Genocide Community

We are excited to report on the great progress being made in Chajul, through the life-skills workshops component of our Youth Development Program, offered not only to our 60 scholars but also to their parents and families.Thanks to your support, Limitless Horizons Ixil is continuing to deepen the program’s impact in Chajul!

Our Peace Corps volunteer Greta and Program Assistant Cecilia have recently developed a number of workshops for the scholars, with themes including positive communication, bullying prevention, and gender equality. Greta noted that the youth were particularly engaged in the gender equality workshop and afterwards were able to identify concrete actions they would take to reduce gender inequality in their community! She also observed that the girls have become more confident in speaking up and participating in activities over the course of the year, which is a valuable sign of the workshops’ and the program’s success.

To see our youth become empowered leaders for Chajul, we believe it is crucial to involve their parents. In this community that suffered greatly from civil war, that lacks of economic and educational opportunities, and where many families live in trauma and poverty, parents often find it difficult to support their children not only economically but personally and emotionally as well. Because supporting youth and families personally, economically, and academically is important to Limitless Horizons Ixil’s approach, the selection process for scholars each year includes conversations with parents to ensure that the family is in support of their children’s education and open to being involved with our programs and workshops.

Recently, Greta and Program Manager Edilma have been conducting workshops with all the parents on positive communication and being a supportive parent. Through activities, role-playing games, and stories, the parents have explored aggressive communication, violence, and positive ways of interacting with their children. They were all very eager to participate and engaged in the activities, enjoying the dramatization of several situations such as with angry parents, with overprotective parents, and with supportive parents. We received positive, encouraging feedback from many of the parents who noted that they learned various ways to support their children’s personal and educational success. Other parent workshops include topics such as decision-making and domestic violence.

We have only been able to provide these recent workshops through your generous contributions and support. Limitless Horizons Ixil’s holistic work in building life skills among our scholars and their families is truly crucial to our mission and the success of Chajul’s budding leaders, and we are very grateful that you are a meaningful part of this work. Thanks to your continued support, we will be able to offer more valuable workshops to youth and families over the months to come!