By Florencia Bluthgen | Project Leader
Dear supporters,
Fresh off the press- our first project report for you! As you know, Cochoapa el Grande, Guerrero is Mexico’s poorest municipality, where, alarmingly, 82% of the population lives in poverty. Here, most families do not have access to such basic services as food and housing.
In Yo quiero Yo puedo, we are committed to reaching the most vulnerable and empowering them to climb out of poverty. That is why, with your support, we are working with the communities in the mountains of Guerrero in a comprehensive community development approach that focuses on life skills geared towards better health practices, hygiene, nutrition and environmental protection. Together, the communities are also developing Eco technologies of dry toilets, vegetable gardens and healthy, safe and environmentally-friendly stoves.
These first few months have focused on building the foundation (figuratively and literally), training 712 local facilitators in 1,173 hours of our “I want to, I can… take care of my health” life skills program. These facilitators now have strong assertive communication, critical thinking and decision-making skills, to name a few. Participants have expressed that they are very happy with these workshops and have already started implementing their newly gained knowledge in their homes and communities. We are also excited to report that with these facilitators and other members of the community, we have built 28 dry bathrooms in 28 communities and 61 wood-conserving biomass cook stoves in 15 communities of Cochoapa el Grande.
So far, we have had an amazing experience working in these communities; we have included a few testimonies from participating community members:
“We don’t have anything, we are forgotten, so thank you so much for coming and bringing us this program,” Abelina, community member.
“We are a new municipality and we are really working to improve things. If you have more programs, we would be thrilled to have them,” Rogelio, community member.
Thank you for your support, and feel free to spread the word about this invaluable program you are making possible!
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