Gender Equality Guatemala Project #31794

Opportunities & Hope for 250 Guatemalan Maya Women

by Highland Support Project

Opportunities & Hope for 250 Guatemalan Maya Women

Project Report | Nov 19, 2019
Good News About Our Ecological Initiatives!!

By Diana Alvarado | HSP Board

As many of you know we have built the same stove model since we started with this project but the last month we have been working hard to improve the clean-air stove model.

To meet these aims, we are working on the Kitchen Performance Test (KPT) which includes quantitative surveys of firewood consumption and qualitative surveys of stove performance and acceptability. This type of testing is the best way to understand the stove’s impact on firewood use and on general household characteristics and behaviors.

After tasting the stoves we have already built using the old model, we found we needed to make the firebox smaller because this will help to save firewood, that is why we visited the place who provide us the bricks. We resize them and we supervise the whole process, we also want to share with you that all the bricks are made of clay, an ecological material.

"My mom and I needed a stove because sometimes she wants to help me to cook but my mom is 91 years old and she is getting blind because of her age and she has burned her hands many times trying to help me. My name is Catarino and I'm very thankful to the donors who made this possible. - Catarino "

Two weeks ago we built the first 4 stoves using the new model, the resized bricks and makes us happy to know that women from Los Gómez are going to spend less firewood to cook with this improve!

"I never have used a circle loom knitting in my life and when I saw it I was so happy because we'll learn and we'll knit hats for our children. Thanks for bringing this type of activity to our communities. We like to learn new things that we can do at any time. This also motivates us to start our own business, we can sell hats to our neighbors or our family. -Esperanza "

A few months ago we started teaching women in La Cumbre to use the circle loom and during the last few weeks, we started teaching women from a different community knitting using a circle loom. The first time that we did this with them we receive more women than what we expected and we didn't have enough looms, but we were happy to see their enthusiasm for learning this technique. All the women at Espumpuja were fascinated because they haven't seen a circle loom before. In the end, all of them knitted a hat and they took it home! They wanted us to leave the looms in their community but unfortunately, we can't because we want to do this activity in other communities. We hope to be able to give them one loom per woman soon so they can start knitting often.

This has been a wonderful year and we are blessed to have had all your support and your continued donations this is why we are so glad to share with you that HSP has been awarded as a Top Rated great non-profit for all the positive reviews from our partners, volunteers, and donors.

Please consider telling your friends and family about our projects this giving season - share the link on your blogs or social networks, use the tell-a-friend feature on the project page to email your network!

Check out our pictures and meet the 4 families we support and some of the women who attended to the knitting class!

- Catarino and his Mom Maria

-Rosa

-Juana

-Justa

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Aug 20, 2019
Improving women's lives in the highlands!

By Diana Alvarado | HSP - Board

Dear Donors,

We are thankful with all of you that through your donations help us to improve women's lives in the different communities of the highlands.

We are also happy to tell you that in the last two months we built the first two washer stations that were necesary for all the women in Chiquix because as many of you know, most homes in the highlands do not have electricity or have water. Women take their families clothes to wash them on the ground with limited water or they wash it on a rock. Washing their clothes on a rock or on the ground isn't easy because the only position to be able to do this is on their knees and after wash it during 2-3 hours it is a physically taxing for them. After washing their clothes they leave it out on shrubs or on the ground to dry. The ground is often contaminated with animal feces which causes skin irritation and rashes when the clothes are worn. This is only the beggining because we want to keep building washer stations for all the women in the highlands!
We had the privilege to support the women building more than 50 clean-air stoves and also with the help of HSP volunteers 15 women assisted to a knitting class in La Cumbre community to learn how knit a hat. We were so happy to see that they are very interested in keep learining about knitting and we will do our best to provide them more yarn to keep knitting!

These are all valuable efforts that will help the women in accessing and taking advantage of opportunities. We cannot help but be grateful by your continued donations and support. We know we would not make these accomplishments a reality without all your help. We are excited for the rest of this year’s opportunities and we look forward to updating you again.

Love from all of us at HSP!

Links:

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May 22, 2019
Mother's Day Celebration and Voter Education on Candidates Platforms

By Diana Alvarado | HSP Board

Melissa, our social promoter have been very busy with the women circles. We’ve seen women successfully pressuring local politicians to obtain material support for their community projects, and we’ve also watched and supported as indigenous women have begun to get involved in local governing bodies. Our hope is that with our continued support, indigenous women of the highlands will continue to get involved in politics in order to force the government to serve them and their communities.

The upcoming elections continue to be a focus. AMA is working on ensuring that the indigenous community know all the political parties and their candidates because in the past they went to the polls and just marked a certain box or color, without fully understanding the implications. We will continue to support indigenous women as they become more educated on how to engage in politics for the betterment of their families and communities- this is the best and only way forward.

In other side we want to share with all of you that we joined forces and made possible one of the biggest dreams that we have had since the last few years... We brought together 250 women who are part of AMA's projects, they came from different communities in San Juan Ostuncalco and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan. We prepared an special Mother's Day celebration. We didn't need to ask if they were happy because they were wearing a beautiful smile all the time, they had the opportunity to meet all the women who were at the celebration. They were thankful with us for have brought them to Xela because some of them haven't been here before so they took a few minutes to walk in the central Park and see how beautiful it is. This celebration couldn't been possible without all the amazing effort that our wonderful team did to make this happened. We'll keep those smiles in our minds to remind that every effort that we do is because we want a better future for all of them, for their families, their communities and because what we do we do it from our hearts without expecting anything back!
We hope to keep having activities like this that bring all these powerful and inspiring women together!

Links:

Mother's Day Celebration

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