Empower Guatemalan Families With Food & Nutrition

As we begin 2018, we are proud to share with you how your support has helped us grow.  We started with fewer than 30 families in just one village. Now the Seeds Team provides teaching, coaching and support in 11 villages.  More than 1200 families have learned to have a successful Family Nutrition Garden, or have advanced to a Backyard Farm, which includes  small animals for protein, fruit trees and maybe even a fish pond, in addition to their garden.  With an average 7.7 persons per household, that means over 9,000 people have benefitted from YOUR support!!

And, many other groups and individuals are becoming interested in the work your support has made possible. Because of this interest in what we are doing and what we have learned, the Seeds Team has begun holding teaching seminars, which have been attended by people from throughout Guatemala who want to learn our methods and share them with others.

Our successful strategies and methods are poised for even wider distribution: the Seeds Team has produced two outstanding field manuals for use by educators and trainers working to improve Food Security and Nutrition throughout rural areas of Guatemala and Central America. Both manuals are detailed and fully illustrated.  The first covers our integrated approach to community development, while the second focuses on two main aspects of the fight against malnutrition, family nutrition gardens and the backyard farm or casa granja. 

Things can sometimes seem confusing or even aggravating these days, but you can always feel Positive and Proud about what your support means to families in rural Guatemala!

Help spread the benefits of your support to even more rural families!  To support our training seminars or the publication of these valuable new manuals, please click the Give Now button below.

THANK YOU for everything!

Links:

• Facebook page designed and managed by the Semillas Team

A few months ago, Maribel and Esbin signed up with the Seeds Team for a backyard farm (Casa Granja, in Spanish).  Maribel speaks proudly of their success: “Our yard is completely different now, more organized, and we are able to have things we never thought we could, such as two coops for raising ducks and chickens, and more space to grow tilapia.  We also ‘discovered’ areas that receive a lot of sun, so we are now planting nutritious greens, tomatoes, broccoli and chiles.”  

Maribel has also absorbed a lot of information about nutrition from the coaching provided by the Seeds Team: “We have learned about the importance of nutrition for our children, and to grow vegetables and animals for our family to eat, because we need both vegetable and animal protein for the nutrition of our children and ourselves as well.”

In addition to helping families learn to make better, more productive use of their existing patio and yard space, the Seeds team also provides training in several forms of recycling: using garden leftovers and animal manure to create fertilizer, using discarded containers and tires for growing nutritious veggies, and proper disposal of unusable solid wastes. 

Each house is different, so each Casa-Granja is a little different.  Herminia has less yard space, so she puts many discarded containers to work.  The photo below shows the chard she grows in a re-purposed tire. The chopped up stalk of a banana tree has been added to provide both moisture and minerals, especially potassium, to the soil.

This is the kind of practical work Seeds for the Future does in rural Guatemala, and as you can see, we are helping families achieve positive results.  YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT IS VITAL to helping these families have enough food, and nutritious food that is grown at home -- basic building blocks for a better life.  PLEASE DONATE TODAY, SO MORE FAMILIES CAN SUCCEED!