I left Guatemala City today to travel 1 hour into the highlands to the state of Chimaltenango where I wended up a long winding road to San Martín Jilotepéque. I was visiting APROSADSE, an organization that IDEX has been supporting for over 3 years now, and who has focused its programs on health, education and agroecology. When I arrived, I was invited to talk with 3 of APROSADSE's Board members to discuss the work of APROSADSE and the Board’s participation.

It's Nicomedes second year of being President of APROSADSE Board, but he has been participating in their programs for 25 years! A married man with 3 daughters, Nicomedes recognizes the positive impact APROSADSE has had on him. As a child he only finished fourth grade before he had to find work to help support his family. When he was a grown adult, he saw that APROSADSE was offering a long-distance education program for people over 15 years old to finish primary and secondary education. He took the opportunity and completed his secondary education. He's happy that he completed that education program and now he works as one of the health promoters in his community.

Perfecta and Marta were the two other Board members present, one a midwife and the other a health promoter, like Nicomedes. Marta, a single mother, was also inspired to participate in the long-distance education program, but only completed the 7th grade "due to circumstances of life," However, her training in health, provided by APROSADSE, was enough to help her find a job as an assistant nurse in a health clinic in Antigua, a popular tourist spot relatively close to Chimaltenango. Now she has returned to San Martín Jilotepéque to work with the Ministry of Health. What does she do there? Well, there is only one doctor who travels once a month to her community. They are called mobile doctors. For the rest of the month Marta is the doctor in her community.

Perfecta hasn't been able to go to school. Instead, she has been focusing on her work as a midwife to her community in the village of Varituc. As a Board member, she comes to all the training workshops that APROSADSE offers including health and agroecology. The health trainings have really helped the quality of her work as midwife. She received a midwife kit that APROSADSE distributed through their health program, which she is grateful for because now she has the proper tools to do her job.

Two years ago, when IDEX visited APROSADSE, the health program was just restarting (after a long period of hiatus) and served only 22 communities. Now they help 130 communities. Almost all the communities within San Martín Jilotepéque! Last year they trained 80 health promoters and 66 midwifes. In addition, they offered training in nutrition to 18 groups of 270 participants from the communities. They've been also strengthening their relationship with San Martin's health center to serve many more people in the town. One of the things that impressed me was that they remodeled their warehouse in the basement into a day care center so that the mothers can bring their children to APROSADSE's office when they want to attend training.

Not only a midwife, Perfecta is able to help her community with livestock rearing and some agriculture projects. Even though she does not work in agroecology herself, she can still help community members due to her knowledge that she acquired by attending to the agroecology workshops at APROSADSE. Last year, APROSADSE was able to train 22 agroecology promoters from 13 communities. Agroecology focuses on livestock rearing and transitioning from conventional farming to organic farming. APROSADSE also has a veterinary store at their office, which serves 416 people from 32 communities in curing animals, providing treatment and selling medicine at affordable prices.

In addition to the long-distance education program that Nicomedes and Marta participated in, APROSADSE has a scholarship program. They gave scholarships to 137 students last year to study primary and secondary education. Another activity APROSADSE carries out is a "summer" program (summer here is from October to December) to 181 secondary school students, giving classes on a range from subjects such as environment, micro-enterprise and sexual transmitted diseases. Like FUNDAESPRO, APROSADSE also involves the parents, and have met with 80 parents 10 times last year to talk about different subjects such as nutrition, environment, interpersonal relations, pregnancy, etc.

Through their agroecology program APROSADSE implements a microcredit initiatives, where they promote group savings and facilitate monthly technical assistance to each group. When APROSADSE distributes microcredit to a group, it does it in one of two ways:
1) Provide microcredit to a group for a group income-generating project; or
2) Provide microcredit to a group, but for individual income-generating projects.

APROSADSE also supports individual microcredit outside of a group, these are approved by the Board. They target community members who can't form a group in their community yet want to receive a microcredit to carry out an agroecology related income-generating project, usually after attending APROSADSE's workshops. One of the great things about APROSADSE is that their workshops are open to everyone, and that's how many people come to learn about APROSADSE's other programs.

These are not all the activities that APROSADSE is carrying out, but already this can show how they've grown since the last time that IDEX visited them. I'm looking forward to meeting the people that benefited from these programs when I start my community visits tomorrow.
Photo credit: Marlon Garcia

Labels: Agroecology, Education, Guatemala, Health, ISMU

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