Category: Youth Leadership

Emerging Entrepreneurs

1/16/2018

Youth Leadership (YL) participants learned how to use the Business Model Canvas

“Tell me, who are key partners in your potential business?” asked Hony Julajuj, Pueblo a Pueblo’s Training and Youth Leadership Project Coordinator.

Young, aspiring entrepreneurs from the Guineales Community and the Xojola Community gathered for a two-day workshop focused on turning their community projects into income-generating businesses. Each group is made up of a handful of youth who joined Youth Leadership (YL) Project in 2015. You can read more about them here.

After two years of learning about organic gardening, project management, monitoring and evaluation the groups are finally ready to plunge into the world of entrepreneurship. The group from Guineales is cultivating mushrooms and plans to sell them to neighbors and at the market. In Xocola, they’re hoping to sell local honey.

The Youth Leadership groups from Guineales is cultivating mushrooms to sell

The goal of the workshop was to identify the status of their projects and introduce them to the Business Model Canvas. The Model provides a strategic template for developing a new business. The visual charts enable participants to identify potential product value, infrastructure, customers and finances.

The Model provides a strategic template for developing a new business

Hony has high hopes for these groups. “The YL participants have taken a lot of initiative. They’ve identified a possible source of income in their communities and have worked together to get to this step. They haven’t formally studied business, but they’re all determined to succeed,” he added.

We’re very excited to see the progress of these small businesses and to see the youth from these communities create sustainable and economic opportunities.

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New Project Empowers Youth as Leaders in Their Communities

6/7/2016

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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

Youth 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

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.

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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School Highlight: Nueva Vida

5/6/2016

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The main school building, with its Kaqchikel name K'ak'ak K'aslem

Nueva Vida School has about 260 students, ranging from preschool to 6th grade. The school is located in a community of the same name approximately an hour from Santiago Atitlan. The school and community are also known by the Kaqchikel name, K’ak’ak’ K’aslem, meaning “new life.” Nueva Vida is a small, rural community with limited economic opportunity, where the majority of families work as laborers on the nearby coffee and dairy plantations.

Pueblo a Pueblo first began working with Nueva Vida School in early 2015 with the Organic School Gardens and WASH in Schools projects. Unlike many of the other schools we work with, the school is owned entirely by the local community, rather than by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, meaning that community leaders are also committed to helping the school progress. Since day one of this new partnership, the school and the community have shown considerable dedication and leadership.

The WASH in Schools project was the first project implemented at the school, helping to address the school’s sanitation issues. Project Manager Tomas explained that “the situation at the school was very bad because they only had 4 latrines for all of the students.” He called it “a worrisome situation,” and added that there was a “very unpleasant smell because of the hot climate.”

The school's only running water source before WASH construction

The new WASH facilities!

Since the project began, the school has made great strides. After beginning WASH trainings and construction last spring, the students celebrated the inauguration of their new bathroom facilities in September. Teachers, students, and community members have been exceptionally active in promoting sanitation and hygiene at the school and in the community. So far, the community support group and the student WASH ambassadors have put on several events, including a community sanitation awareness march and a celebration for International Handwashing Day.

As part of the WASH project, students clean up their community

Celebrating International Handwashing Day

The Organic School Gardens project at Nueva Vida School has proved to be one of our most successful school garden partnerships yet. After planning the garden in the first half of the year, classes and trainings began this past summer. In its first 6 months, the garden produced a whopping 547 pounds of fruits and vegetables -- more than any other school garden produced in an entire year!

Organic School Gardens Project Manager, Ana, credits the school’s success to the commitment and involvement of teachers, students, and community members: “They are very responsive to any suggestions we might have and go above and beyond the goals they set for themselves monthly.”

The flourishing school garden

Proud students with some of their harvest

Most recently, we have worked with Nueva Vida School to implement our new Youth Leadership Project. The project, which officially began this January but first began as a pilot at the beginning of 2015, has brought a group of youth together to serve as community leaders in the organic school garden. So far, Pueblo a Pueblo staff have carried out several trainings with the group of youth leaders with great success.

Ana explained that the youth have helped a lot in preparing and maintaining the garden and have learned many gardening and project management skills. She added, “Another benefit is that they serve as role models for the younger students, who see them getting involved and volunteering their time and effort to help out in the community.”

We are very excited by this new partnership with Nueva Vida School and cannot wait to see it thrive even more in the future!

The youth leadership group in the office for training

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School Highlight: Nueva Vida

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New Project Empowers Youth as Leaders in Their Communities