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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! ​

Laying the Groundwork for Women's Health Champions

12/4/2018

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Picture
Vilma demonstrates the reusable cloth pads
Every morning for a week this past November, instead of coming to work at the Pueblo a Pueblo office, Women’s Health Champions project manager Vilma Mendoza traveled by boat to the other side of Lake Atitlán. She crossed the lake each day to participate in a training led by Days for Girls, an organization which, like Vilma, advocates for the health and well-being of young women.

During her week at Days for Girls, Vilma received workshops in sewing and business planning as well as a primer in Days for Girls’ own menstruation-centered women’s health curriculum. She is preparing to act as mentor and health advisor to a small business, still in its infancy, which will produce and distribute reusable cloth menstrual pads in and around Santiago Atitlán.

This social enterprise will play a key role in the Women’s Health Champions project: it will supply the pads that participating peer educators, or “Champions”, will distribute to other women in their communities. By selling pads, Champions will make valuable income for themselves at the same time that they promote environmental sustainability and good menstrual hygiene. The pads, which last for at least three years, are an economical alternative to the disposable pads that most women in Santiago Atitlán buy each month, an important option for women who must often find creative ways to meet their own needs in the allocation of scarce familial resources.

Vilma's time with Days for Girls also left her newly inspired to engage girls in conversations about women's health. "Menstruation is not a disease, and it does not have to be debilitating," she notes. "We must speak to young girls to interrupt these harmful beliefs and attitudes before they take root." The Champions will offer girls new knowledge of how to care for their bodies as well as a concrete tool to help them do just that: reusable pads.

The small business is still in its early stages, but Vilma has started meeting with a core group of women interested in participating to set expectations and map the way ahead. In November, the business also got a boost from a group of volunteers visiting Pueblo a Pueblo from the United States. The volunteers, all members of Utah-based ASI Robotics, Inc., brought a donation of six hand-powered sewing machines to be used in making the pads.  Volunteers also led a three-part entrepreneurship workshop, providing valuable guidance on the group's business plan. The wheels are in motion for the development of a successful woman-led social enterprise here in Santiago Atitlán!

To support Vilma, the Champions, and the production of reusable menstrual pads here in Santiago Atitlán, consider making a gift to Pueblo a Pueblo today! Your year-end gift is a commitment to comprehensive women's health education, environmental sustainability, and economic empowerment through entrepreneurship. Visit pueblodonate.org to donate, check out our website to learn more about the project, or contact us at communications@puebloapueblo.org for more information on how you can help this project succeed!
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Sparking Dialogue with the Women's Health Team

11/6/2018

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Picture
Vilma leads a workshop in San Juan La Laguna
Our Women's Right to Health team works mainly in and around Santiago Atitlán, but Vilma and Rebeca are advocates for the health of women across the Lake Atitlán region. They believe that whether or not a woman is a mother—and whether or not she ever plans to be—she deserves access to knowledge that equips her to care for her whole body and her whole self. As such, they are dedicated to facilitating open, honest conversation about women’s bodies, health, and sexuality wherever and whenever they can.

While Vilma and Rebeca coordinate the logistics of our women's health projects, they are health educators first, passionate about empowering women to care for their own bodies. They regularly lead educational sessions for project participants, but earlier this fall, Vilma and Rebeca traveled out into communities all around Lake Atitlán to lead workshops on sexual and reproductive health with women of all ages.

First, Vilma set off across the lake to an area she rarely visits in the course of her work. Recognized for her experience as a family planning educator, she was invited to bring a workshop on that topic to women in six different communities along the lake’s northeast edge. Throughout the month of September, she crossed the lake to meet women in their own communities.
PictureVilma discusses a variety of family planning methods with workshop participants
​Taboos around women’s bodies often produce misconceptions about family planning methods and their relationship to reproductive health. Vilma notes that her work often consists of challenging these misconceptions. “Many times women will say to other women, ‘That kind of family planning didn’t work for me, so it won’t work for you’—or, ‘It made me sick, so it will hurt you too,’” she says. “So perhaps the most important thing I explain during the sessions is that every woman’s body is different, and not all methods work for all bodies.”

During the last week of September, Vilma and Rebeca stepped out of the office to attend an activity right here in Santiago Atitlán. They had been invited to participate in a health fair hosted by our partner health clinic Rxiin Tnamet in honor of World Contraception Day and asked to present on the topic of sexual and reproductive anatomy to the high school students in attendance. So Vilma and Rebeca brought their diagrams and their plastic models and spent the day teaching teens about their own bodies.
Picture
Rebeca gives an anatomy presentation to students attending the health fair
PictureStudents visit the Pueblo a Pueblo booth
“We participated in this activity because I believe that if we can prevent unplanned pregnancies, then we will see fewer single mothers in our community,” Vilma reflected. “Young people have to learn to respect women and women’s bodies.” She also noted the importance of a deep understanding of reproductive health topics. “Many people know their own anatomy in an intellectual sense, but they don’t understand it on a personal level, as it relates to their own emotions and desires. We want our community to be made up of people who are capable of making empowered decisions about their own health and their own futures. That is why it is important to educate young people.”

​Vilma and Rebeca’s regular duties have brought them back to the Pueblo a Pueblo office, but they remain as invested as ever in empowering women through health education—both here at home and on the road!

*Photos by Alexandra Harrison-Cripps and Livvy Runyon ​​
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Fighting for the Health of All Women

8/8/2018

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Picture
Vilma at a Family Planning Champions training in 2016
In 2011, Vilma Mendoza was a social work student, completing her practicum with the Maternal Child Health project at Pueblo a Pueblo. Each day she spoke with women at all stages of participation in the project, from their first prenatal check-in through their final meeting at their child’s fifth birthday. As she met with participants, Vilma noticed that most of them became pregnant again well within the project’s short timeline, many of them almost immediately after giving birth.
​
When Vilma and her coworkers looked closer, they found that many women in and around Santiago Atitlán did not have the information they needed to make informed family planning decisions. According to a 2017 survey of the state of Sololá, where Pueblo a Pueblo operates, 78% of women who reported not using any form of contraception had not spoken with a healthcare professional on the subject.* To address this, Vilma’s team created Family Planning Champions, and soon they began training women to be family planning peer educators, or “Champions.” The project quickly became a mainstay at Pueblo a Pueblo.
Picture
A Champion takes careful notes during a training session
PictureA Champion leads a lesson in her community
The Family Planning Champions project has seen a fruitful seven years. However, in intervening years, Vilma has found room for improvement. Here in the Lake Atitlán region, it is difficult to include single women in family planning education due to cultural norms that prohibit women from sexual activity outside of marriage. “We saw that by focusing exclusively on family planning, the project was leaving many women behind—especially young women and unmarried women,” Vilma explains.

So Vilma and her team set out to revise what they had created.

Enter Women’s Health Champions, a more inclusive, more comprehensive project to bring women’s health education to the Lake Atitlán region. “It’s not just family planning anymore,” explains Vilma. “It’s about the whole health of women at all stages of life.” After all, whether or not participants are wives, mothers, daughters, or grandmothers, they are women first, and their own bodies and selves need and deserve care. The new project will feature an expanded curriculum that more fully addresses sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), topics which are fundamentally important to the ability of all women to live full and healthy lives.

“In my mind,” says Vilma, “Women’s Health Champions is about three things:  helping women advocate for their own health, caring for the environment by promoting ecologically friendly products like reusable cloth menstrual pads, and creating spaces for women to design new sources of income that belong to them.” We can’t wait to see this new project come into being. After all, Women’s Health Champions fosters collaboration between women—and when women work together, they are capable of incredible things.

This vital project is fully designed and ready for implementation—now Women’s Health Champions needs funding to get off the ground! Our first goal is to raise $9,500 to fund the first year of the project. Please consider supporting our Women’s Health Champions; visit our website to learn more, click here to donate (make sure to enter "Women's Health Champions" in the notes), or contact us at communications@puebloapueblo.org!


*Observatorio de Salud Reproductivo de Guatemala, http://osarguatemala.org/
​

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  • 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 >
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