Give efficient stoves to 100 Guatemalan families

GuateBuena's team of local leaders is launching an initiative for Indigenous Maya women raising awareness and developing positive practices to support menstrual and reproductive well-being.

According to Maya traditions, human beings mature in cycles of 13 years. Around the end of a woman's first 13-year cycle, reproductive maturity is signaled by the beginning of the menstrual cycle. As in many other Indigenous traditions, menstruation is also linked to the lunar cycle.

Although there exists rich traditional knowledge around menstruation among the Maya, a culture of discomfort and shame exists around the topic, and many Guatemalan women don't have access to good information. The culture of silence makes it hard for women to share, explore, and experience all of the dimensions of their reproductive cycles -- how it connects them to their bodies, emotions, life-giving power, other women, and the Earth.

Furthermore, the use of disposable feminine products is becoming more prevalent in Guatemalan communities; these are a significant expense for poor women, and they produce unneccessary pollution and adverse health effects. 

In preparation for this initiative, we sent a survey about menstrual health to 200 women in GuateBuena's women's Solidarity Groups. The survey showed 75% of the women feel uncomfortable talking about their menstrual cycle with others. We found that 70% of the respondents have had health problems like infections, irritation, or allergies because of the disposable plastic pads they use, and that 86% would be interested in an ecological menstrual product.

With this information and their ample years of personal experience, the GuateBuena team felt assured that there is a real need for a menstrual and reproductive health initiative, and we launched a pilot of the program. In partnership with an organization called Days for Girls, we delivered workshops on menstrual health and reusable menstrual pads to 175 women in the program.

The response from these workshops was resoundingly positive! In 2023, we plan to expand this initiative to be able to reach more women and to support women's well-being across all dimensions of our work: spiritually, emotionally, physically, economically, and ecologically. Next year's workshops will also include family planning education, so that our Reproductive Well-being initiative can be more comprehensive.

We appreciate your continual support, without which all this work would not be possible.

In the past several months, the GuateBuena team has been working hard to build a vision for each of the pillars of our work, as we expand the Community Finance program in order to provide holistic support to these 23 solidarity groups of women.

The pillars of our work are:

• Economic Well-Being: We continue to address this pillar of our work through financial literacy workshops and trainings and continuous accompaniment to help the groups run their own informal community banks. In addition, members are given paid work opportunities within our sister social enterprise, Ixoq'i.
  
  
• Physical Well-Being: We are building local partnerships to support in the areas of 1) visual health, 2) menstrual support, and 3) traditional medicine: 1) We have invited a social entrepreneur who focuses on visual health to provide eye exams and glasses to our groups. 2) Days for Girls International has connected us with a local producer of reusable menstrual products, and we are planning to provide women of reproductive age with kits. 3) We are also gathering knowledge from an elder in one of our communities on traditional medicinal plants, and preparing workshops to share this knowledge.
  
  
• Emotional Well-Being: The newest member of our team, Lisbeth, is 18 years old, the youngest on our team. She wants to study psychology and is hard at work helping us develop ideas for supporting emotional well-being within the solidarity groups. We've started with a weekly sharing circle within our team. Longtime Community Finance Advisor María Sotz is also providing individual counseling to members who are in need of personal support.
  
  
• Spiritual Well-Being: In our weekly sharing circle, our team also discusses their own spiritual well-being. They draw from Christianity and their own traditional Maya spirituality to make meaning and connect with one another. Wilfred, our director, has recently been inspired by Buddhist thought, and has been sharing wisdom he has gathered with the team. We are exploring the possibility of creating guided meditations for women to intentionally use their weaving work as a practice that settles the body and mind.
  
  
• Ecological Well-Being: Our plans for this pillar include sending team members to the Mesoamerican Institute for Permaculture to learn techniques in regenerative agriculture, composting chicken coops, and more—and to be able to share this knowledge through our member groups. We are also keen to help our only men's group with their local reforestation initiative.
  
  

It is important that as we build these pillars, we also define what success looks like in each. To help us with impact measurement we are partnering with Medida, a Guatemala-based social initiative, to develop a monitoring and evaluation plan and tools to help us track progress.

We are still early in the development of these ideas, and grateful for your ongoing support. You enable us at this critical and exciting time of foundation-building to prepare for both deepening and expanding our programming to be more meaningful, and to support our communities in the pursuit of true happiness. Thank you for your kind generosity.