Training, Workshops and Demonstrations
All community projects (stoves, water, corn mills, agriculture, etc.) include workshops and capacity building for all beneficiaries to ensure full participation of community members as well as knowledge sharing and sustainability of the projects.
local leadership
The leaders carrying out project work are local men, women, and young people. By filling these leadership roles with local people, APROSARSTUN is empowering the local community and placing responsibility in their hands, while developing role-models and centers of learning for neighboring communities.
Self Sufficiency and Pride
APROSARSTUN wants its communities to be places where self-sufficiency leads to pride and enables villagers to negotiate with absentee landowners to purchase or rent lands, demonstrating their investment in taking care of the land for future generations and even educating these landowners about the difficult realities and trade-offs in the area.
Photos: Training, Workshops & Demonstrations
Inclusion and Empowerment
Traditionally, women have been excluded from leadership roles in indigenous groups in Latin America.
The communities in this area are isolated, living in poverty and lack access to land. Due to their isolation, the communities also lack health services and access to education, resulting in high illiteracy rates in the older adult population.
The female population has had less access to education because young girls in the past often helped with household duties instead of attending school. (This is changing now as many youth, both boys and girls, are now able to access middle school and secondary education at the residential school, Ak’Tenamit, as beneficiaries of the scholarship program or at Instituto Nacional de Educación Básica de Telesecundaria “Esperanza de Rio Dulce”, Aldea Nuevo Nacimiento Cáliz, Livingston Izabal. (See About Us – Partners – Ak’Tenamit.)
Improving the Lives of Women
APROSARSTUN believes full participation of women is essential so they can play a leading role in their homes and communities. Also, training and educating women often results in educating a whole family. The participation of women in decision making is important.
Many projects, such as the water filter project, the improved stove project, food security projects are interventions that improve the health and well being of the women and their families. Providing easier access to water is a key to reducing women’s work load.
Watch the Video: Bringing Water to a Community
Empowering Women
Learning how to manage the community corn grinding business, growing a garden or raising chickens are small interventions that support and empower women.
“In our village, we have not had the opportunity (in the past) of projects that directly benefitted the women, but you (APROSARSTUN) have thought about the lives of rural women and are changing the story of our communities.” – Doña Matilde
Photos: Inclusion and Empowering Women
Natural Resource Management
The lowland tropical rainforests such as those of the Sarstún Region are the most threatened habitat in the Atlantic Coast of Mesoamerica. Less than 20% of their original extent remains and there is ongoing pressure from cattle ranching, agriculture, hunting, fishing, oil, timber, mining and other extractive activities.
In response to local and global environmental threats, APROSARSTUN has created a model for training community leaders on environmental issues.
The purpose is to promote community-level management and sustainable use of natural resources. Following these workshops there is a significant change in attitudes and thinking of the leaders regarding the care and conservation of natural resources.
Each training includes participation of representatives in the region of Sarstun, who are community leaders and decision-makers. Each event is managed so that every leader can participate and they arrive with the conviction to learn something useful for themselves and also for the development of their communities.
Photos: Ecological Awareness: Living and Working in a Protected Area
