Nutrition for me and all my friends: Chiapas

In the last two months, the Amextra regional team working in Los Altos, Chiapas has been busy providing health and nutrition workshops, accompaning the communities with the harvest, building ecological toilets, strengthening the beekeeping program, and monitoring the health and nutrition status of the women and children in 5 communities. Here´s a quick recap: 

Harvest in the greenhouse
In the community of Xulumó of the municipality of Aldama, Chiapas,  the third and last harvest was collected, obtaining a total of 85 kilos (187 lbs!) of Saladette tomatoes, as well as 18 kilos (19 lbs)  of jalapeño peppers. This harvest allowed for the diversification of the diet of families, as well as material for canning and sale to supplement the families´s economies.  A win-win situation!

Backyard Chicken Coops 
Through the food preparation workshops, we seek to introduce healthy and nutritious dishes using local harvests or the production of meat and eggs from backyard chicken coops. In September, twenty-one people (women, men, and children) in the community of Tzacucum, of Chalchihuitán learned to prepare boiled eggs stuffed with tuna fish and chayote (a local vegetable, similar to zucchini) as well as the atol corn drink.  

Training and reforestation in the apiary.
In the community of Santa Cruz in Aldama, Chiapas, theoretical and practical workshops were given to a group of beekeepers in topics such as: control of plagues and diseases in bees, honey safety standards, and reforestation, in order to produce a quality product for consumers and also to preserve the life of these very important pollinating insects.

Finally, Rosa, 60 years old midwife, from the Tzacucum community, shares with us her story of participating in healthy cooking classes. ¨With Amextra, I always learn new things. I´ve invited other women so they learn about cooking new things, too.  I liked the session on preparing atol with milk, because it´s a new way to consume corn. Before, we used to only eat corn with salty foods. Amextra teaches us to consume foods that we have available, in this case corn and milk. Before, we never drank milk because we didn´t know how, so we left it there, with no one drinking it. I like atol and will make it again.¨

Thanks to your support, many women like Rosa are both harvesting a greater variety of foods and learning to prepare them.  Looking ahead at the next few months, we are excited to continue accompanying these communities to have even greater crop production and create more recipes!