By Andrea Enriquez | Communications and Development Manager
Dear friend,
While stunting can take generations to overcome, improving brain development is possible within a single generation, giving children in rural communities a stronger foundation to thrive.
In 2025, our Family-Centered Nutrition Program launched IJ’ATZ (“seed” in Kaqchikel), a new model for supporting children with stunting and malnutrition that brings together physical growth and brain development, which we previously addressed separately. IJ’ATZ is the result of what we have learned, combined with our commitment to continuously learning and innovating to develop new approaches to care. The model is also based on the World Health Organization’s Nurturing Care Framework and focuses on five key areas: health, nutrition, early learning, safety and security, and responsive caregiving.
We are also bringing child development support to caregivers’ phones. Our Center for Indigenous Health Research and our IT staff with the support of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, developed BebeApp, a mobile application that provides caregivers in rural communities with culturally adapted guidance on sleep, activity, and nutrition to support early child development.
We are studying how families interact with the app to evaluate its effectiveness in improving child development outcomes. After successful pilot testing with caregivers and clinicians, we are now preparing to launch BebeApp for free on the Google Play Store.
As Kara Andrade, former Wuqu' Kawoq Board Member, shared:
“Wuqu' Kawoq is working with an often unseen and ignored population in Guatemala. Their work is creative, cutting-edge, very innovative, and relevant and useful to the groups that they work with. It’s also life-saving work, and they do it with a lot of dedication and humility.”
Thank you for supporting our Fight Malnutrition in Rural Guatemala project on GlobalGiving and for being part of this work. Your support brings new opportunities to children and families in the communities we serve.
Warmly,
Andrea Enriquez
Communications and Development Manager
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
