Empowering 50 rural young people in Oaxaca, Mexico

Young people from rural communities of the Mixtec region in Oaxaca, continued in the last quarter of 2019 and the first two months of 2020 with the process of carrying our their initiatives. In addition to that we had a meeting In November 2019 where they shared the activities they are carrying out, difficulties in implementing their initiatives, lessons learned and perspectives.

 We share with you, two of the community initiatives, which are making good progress:

Collective “Voices of Organized Women"

Goal:

-Women in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca know their human rights and exercise them and live equitable and egalitarian relationships through actions of self-sufficiency, exchange of knowledge and actions.

 Performed activities:

- Creation of the municipal council.

- Dissemination of the gender alert on the radio.

- Internal and external meetings to define more actions of how to respond to the gender alert.

- Training.

- Sharing of knowledge and resources.

- Attendance at meetings.

- Continued presence. How do we as women manage to stay in a group.

Conversational Results:

- Earth: strengthening the collectivity.

- Sky: links with institutions, osc, groups, women.

- Human energy: re-recognizing ourselves as women, remembering and looking at ourselves again.

 Collective “The Living Seed”

 Goal:

- Rescue of local fruit trees and conservation of native seeds, through to create a space for training and demonstration of how to plant the trees, fruit trees in the region.

Performed activities:

- Healthy eating workshop.

- Organic fertilizer workshop.

The construction of the nursery is still unfinished.

Achievements:

-       The nursery has yet to be established.

Achievements and strengths of the initiatives

 - Encouragement and knowledge about the theme that each of us is working on.

- Openness to learn new things.

- Willingness to share with people.

- Support for the media.

- Spaces for meetings and work.

- The addition of skills and alliances with other related groups.

- Dialogue with people and participation within the community and acceptance by people of the themes that each of us is dealing with.

- Support from the family.

- Losing the fear of speaking in front of a group.

- Dedication, work, effort and time that they dedicate to their initiative.

- Having been able to form their collective, to start the market again.

- Meet other people.

- The project extended to community.

- Availability of time

Thanks to the support of the people who donated and shared their love via GlobalGiving, it's helping to increase young people’s skills, improve their self esteem and the Common Good to become a reality little by little.

 We all build the common good to be happy!