By Danielle Huffaker | Project Advocate
Last year, you helped us evolve the Community Finance Guatemala program into GuateBuena (Ütz Iximulew in the Kaqchikel language), an integral association helping Guatemalan families pursue holistic well-being. In pursuit of GuateBuena’s expanded vision, 2022 brought new and renewed initiatives to provide spiritual and emotional support, and to promote physical and visual health for our members, while continuing and expanding our core services providing economic opportunity. Please join us in celebrating these achievements!
Community Finance:
The 25 Solidarity Groups of women saved more than 72,000 USD and supported members with more than 91,000 USD in small loans, allowing investments in agriculture, small businesses, education, health care, and basic services. Members earned nearly 16,000 USD in interest.
Ixoqi', Women Weaving Development:
Our artisan social enterprise sold more than 18,000 hats to retail partner Sunshine Tienda, generating income for more than 100 women artisans from the solidarity groups, strengthening the nutrition, health, and education of participating families.
An Emerging Credit Union:
The team launched a fund, COFOCOPI, to offer loans to the Solidarity Groups and to social entrepreneurs. COFOCOPI is a pilot for our vision of establishing a financial institution that is non-exploitative and empowering, for the benefit of local people.
Emotional & Spiritual Well-being:
We introduced mindfulness and gratitude workshops and practices to the Solidarity Groups and Ixoqi’ weavers.
Reproductive & Menstrual Health:
We offered family planning courses and launched a pilot offering menstrual education workshops and reusable menstrual products to 175 women. These kits help reduce expenses and plastic waste from more than 300 disposable towels per woman per year.
Ancestral Medicine Initiative:
The team launched an initiative to research and collect more than 40 varieties of ancestral medicinal plants, and started a garden to cultivate them. We collected information on usage of the plants from a community elder named Tata Farlestino, who passed away last year after generously sharing his knowledge with us. Part of Tata Farlestino’s legacy will be the development of ancestral medicine workshops and materials on herbal health practices for our families.
Visual Health:
We made eye exams and glasses available to more than 300 people, and donated glasses to two groups of elderly people in nursing homes.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for your role in enabling all of our work in 2022 - and beyond!
GuateBuena relies on the support of our partner non-profit GRACE Cares, which provides us with trainings and mentorship to scale our impact, and enables your gifts to be tax-deductible in the U.S. To join GRACE Cares' mailing list, click here.
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