PROJECTS IN INDIGENOUS CULTURE
Vicente Guerrero – MEXICO
EPIC, and Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural Vicente Guerrero began a collaboration to encourage organic agricultural production in Axochiapan, Mexico. The past work of Fundación Don Sergio Méndez Arceo had been fighting effectively and forcefully for human rights in Mexico.
Maya Cultural Center – GUATEMALA
The Casa Para La Cultura Maya is a cultural center and educational resource: to preserve, esteem and promote all expression of Maya culture including Maya dress, music, dance, art, weaving, agriculture, cuisine, and community, spiritual, and family values; to reach out to the non-indigenous (ladino) population of Guatemala with special programs and events; to serve as a place where Mayas will have the opportunity to present their own interpretation of Maya culture to Guatemala’s international and national tourists.
La Semilla del Progreso: Agricultural Training – HONDURAS
La Semilla del Progreso, an agricultural training center providing intensive training for farmers from surrounding communities and afterwards continues to support them in the sometimes delicate transition from conventional practices to regenerative organic agriculture.
Baja Verapaz: Health Education – GUATEMALA
Baja Verapaz - Health Education program fights persistent malnutrition by teaching poor indigenous families in rural Guatemala to produce abundant nutritious food. This is important because Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world and the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Baja Verapaz: Sustainable Agriculture – GUATEMALA
Baja Verapaz - Sustainable Agriculture program begins work with farm families by focusing on increasing yields of the basic food crops, which in Guatemala are corn and beans. By implementing extremely effective new practices of water management, soil conservation and resilient sustainable agriculture, program participants usually double their corn and beans harvests in the first year.
Mujeres en Acción – GUATEMALA
Mujeres en Acción is a micro-finance organization of Maya women. It began in 1984 when Felipa Xico was concerned for widows left without a means of support due to civil war. She went on to found Mujeres en Acción that has become a strong micro-credit organization which also addresses the multiple needs of the women participants.