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Pueblo a Pueblo Blog

Right from Santiago Atitlán to your computer. Your window into our world. Thanks for reading and comments are welcome! ​

Rainy Season in Santiago Atitlan

6/8/2016

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Picture
Cloudy skies over Volcan Toliman and the San Andres organic school garden!
Rainy season in Santiago Atitlan begins in May, bringing along frequent heavy rains that last through November. It affects all aspects of life in and around Santiago in different ways, ushering in new life while creating new obstacles. This month, we took a look at how the rainy season affects our programs and the lives of our community partners.

For our project staff that carry out home visits to our Primary Education and Maternal Child Health sponsees, heavy rains often mean reaching homes in rural communities can be more difficult. Meetings with school partners may be delayed, and our 10 Family Planning Champions may have to postpone community charlas. For the most part, however, we can work around these obstacles by being flexible and resourceful.

The rains bring necessary nourishment for crops to flourish, but they can also temporarily restrict economic opportunities for beneficiary families. Maternal Child Health Project Manager, Vilma Mendoza, explains that “When there is a lot of rain husbands cannot go to work in the mountains, and their families may have few other sources of income besides the beadwork that the wives can sell.”

Along with these obstacles, however, come positive changes. For our WASH In Schools project, communities that have previously struggled with limited water access see their water sources replenished after the heavy rains. Crops in the area thrive with the extra nourishment in the rainy season, providing food and work for our beneficiaries later in the harvest season.
The rainy season most affects our Beekeeping and Organic School Gardens projects. In our partner apiaries, beekeepers have to prepare the hives to withstand the rain and its consequences. They prepare special impermeable roofs, and monitor the hives more frequently to ward off harmful insects and fungi. Because of the frequent rains, bees are unable to leave the hives as often to collect pollen and nectar, and beekeepers must supplement their food supply.

The rejuvenating rains also change the kinds of plants that grow and flower near the apiaries. Project Manager Ana Cabrera explains how “In the rainy season, there are different flowers blooming, which gives the honey that the bees produce a different flavor and coloring than in other times of the year.”

In our school gardens, the rains usher in the most fertile and productive period of the year. Ana explains that with the rains, “everything turns greener. There is more life in the gardens.”

The rainy season also brings new work for teachers, students, and communities maintaining the organic school gardens. They no longer have to water the plants, but there is more weeding to be done. With the heavy rains, we support our community partners in preparing a water collection system to ensure the excess water does not damage the plant beds. Plants also must be routinely checked for insects or fungi, to ensure any infection does not spread to other plants. But the new work is worth it for the bountiful and nutritious harvest!
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New Project Empowers Youth as Leaders in Their Communities

6/7/2016

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Picture
Youth from different communities in the Pueblo a Pueblo office
Pueblo a Pueblo has taken on an exciting new initiative in the past year -- and we are excited to share it with you!  As we hinted in last month’s newsletter (sign up for updates here!), we have launched a new project to support our organic school gardens: the Youth Leadership project.

We launched the project when we saw how many youth in our partner communities had few economic opportunities available to them locally.  Director of Programs, Montse Deu, described the situation:​
The younger generations are no longer interested in farming, which results in the youth of rural communities emigrating to urban areas or to another country. The project was created with the belief that providing youth with the necessary skills [...] would open up new opportunities for them to remain in their communities and support social development at a local level
PictureYouth leaders with primary students at the Nueva Vida School garden
​We developed the Youth Leadership project as a pilot in early 2015 through a partnership with FECCEG (La Federacion de Cafe Especial de Guatemala, or The Guatemalan Specialty Coffee Federation), an organization that works to bring together smallholder specialty coffee farmers, providing technical trainings and support, promoting organic agriculture, and helping to export their products at fair prices. FECCEG has strong community ties and has been critical to the project’s success.

The Youth Leadership project has also helped to increase community involvement in the organic gardens. The groups of youth are leading their communities, and they demonstrate the benefits of community gardening. Montse described another goal of the project, saying:

The project sets the groundwork for several generations (youth, children, teachers, and parents) to work together to produce something amazing: a functioning organic school garden. When the school garden does well, it becomes a tool to teach children the benefits of growing organic foods; it shows teachers how to use the garden as a comprehensive educational tool; it provides the youth a tool to be productive while being socially conscious; and it gives the whole community a new opportunity towards environmentally conscious development
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Youth leaders participate in a training with Hony (center) at the Pueblo a Pueblo office
​During its 2015 pilot phase, the project partnered with three youth in Guineales and five youth in Xojola, both communities located in the Boca Costa region slightly outside of the area around Lake Atitlan. After a successful pilot, the program went official at the beginning of this year.  There are now 20 youth (15 women!) between the ages of 16 and 24 participating in four communities.

In workshops, the youth have been learning about organic agriculture, school/community gardens, techniques for working with school children, project management and development, entrepreneurship, and community service. Several trainings have been held in the community gardens, as well as in Pueblo a Pueblo’s Santiago Atitlan office. Most recently, the youth from all four communities participated together in a three-day workshop series, gaining new skills and knowledge and exchanging what they have already learned.
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Learning composting techniques
Pueblo a Pueblo’s Garden Technician, Hony Julajuj, has taken the lead in the new project, enthusiastically carrying out the trainings with the groups of youth. He says, they are “really interested in learning and excelling, and they consistently show a positive attitude about the project. They are excited to undertake a project that will give them the skills to ultimately earn an income in the formal economy.”

We are extremely excited by the progress that we’ve seen since project launch -- and we can’t wait to see how much more it will grow!
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Guatemala Office
Cantón Tzanjuyú 
Santiago Atitlán, Sololá 
(+502) 7721.7449 (Callers in Guatemala)
+1 (920) 383-1506 (Callers in the U.S.)



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2700 Mayan Drive
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316
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Pueblo a Pueblo has been awarded GuideStar's 2019 Gold Seal for Transparency, meets the BBB Wise Giving Alliance's Standards for Charity Accountability, and was named a finalist for the National Coffee Association's 2019 Origin Charity of the Year award.
  • HOME
  • ABOUT US
    • OUR MISSION
    • OUR TEAM
    • BOARD OF DIRECTORS
    • OUR SUPPORTERS >
      • COFFEE INDUSTRY PARTNERS
    • Annual Report
    • FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY >
      • AUDITS & FORMS 990
    • Partnership with Natik
    • Our COVID-19 Response
  • PROGRAMS
    • WHAT WE DO
    • WOMEN'S RIGHT TO HEALTH >
      • MATERNAL CHILD HEALTH
      • WOMEN'S HEALTH CHAMPIONS
    • SCHOOL HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND NUTRITION >
      • WATER, SANITATION, AND HYGIENE IN SCHOOLS
      • PRIMARY EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIPS
      • PATHWAYS TO LITERACY
      • SCHOOL NUTRITION
      • ORGANIC TEACHING GARDEN
    • SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS >
      • BEEKEEPING
      • YOUTH LEADERSHIP
      • WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
  • BLOG
  • MULTIMEDIA
    • IN THE NEWS
    • PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
  • DONATE
  • CONTACT