Help Guatemalan Women Achieve Self-Sufficiency

As part of this project a group of women from the community of El Sauce Xesuj carried out the workshops to help them develop a chicken cooperative. They learned how to build a chicken coup that was the right size and secure for the chickens. In addition they were taught how to prevent diseases that can afflict chickens and also treatment for common chicken ailments, should they fall ill. The women learned the importance of using organic feed and how to recycle chicken waste to use within their community for producing organic fertilizer for their crops.

After their chicken cooperative project had been implemented APROSADSE returned to the village to evaluate the results from hen-raising projects. • 11 families acquired more knowledge about raising poultry in themes such as sanitation, common diseases in chickens, nutrition, chicken coup installations • 11 women were able to contribute to their household food consumption through their chicken-raising projects • 11 families are raising 30 to 50 local varieties of chickens and are currently in the process of selecting the ones that are good producers of eggs and meat • They are using the organic fertilizer (chicken droppings) for their organic agriculture, phasing out of using chemical fertilizers from their plots of farm land • The families are selling some of their chickens to raise money to maintain their farms and ultimately increase the number of chickens • The community now has a group fund of $470 that was collected through loan repayments and women starting savings to be used as an emergency loan for any member of the group.

There were a few problems in that some of the chicken coups needed structural improvements to ensure greater protection from heat extremes for the chickens. But APROSADSE was able to help them with more training and also provided veterinary assistance for chickens with ailments beyond the community’s knowledge. But overall the project has been a huge success for El Sauce Xesuj.