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The Women's Self-Reliance Program 
Overview

The purpose of this program is to bring to women in economically depressed areas information and courses of action which, when used in conjunction with their own skills and knowledge, will help them to provide a healthier and more comfortable life for themselves and their families.   Information in the areas of nutrition, intensive vegetable gardening and micro-enterprise are offered. 

The nutrition segment provides a basic knowledge of our nutritional needs and how to meet those needs with the foods that are available to the women participating in the program, supplementing their existing menu, where necessary, with foods that will provide any nutrients that have been missing from their diet. 

The gardening method offered is an intensive gardening program, which has been developed under the names Square Foot Gardening, Square Meter Gardening and Global Grid Gardening.  This method of growing,  when combined with the use of biodynamic soil preparations and seeds, can contribute significantly to a family’s fresh food needs even in areas where there is very little arable land available. 

The micro-enterprise segment concentrates on providing information that relates to operating a very small business, in other words, the basic skills of self-employment.

It is the intention of this program to respect, honor and learn from the people with whom we share the information we have gathered.  We fully expect to learn as much, if not more, than we offer.  It is our hope that whatever of value that we are able to bring to the situation will be shared with others who will in turn benefit.  It is also our intention to take what we learn from the participants and integrate it into our program, thereby making it a living, growing, ever-improving product.   

We have much to learn from one another and it is only through mutual respect and appreciation that we will be able to co-create a better world. 

 

The Ladies of El Remate

In January of 2005 the Women's Self-Reliance Program was initiated in the Peten region of  Guatemala.  This letter, written on February 5, 2005 describes our experience in the village of El Remate.

 

 
Dear Friends and Family,
As many of you know, about ten days ago I returned from a two week visit to El Remate, Guatemala.  The village of El Remate sits in the middle of the Peten region on a huge volcano-formed lake called Peten Itza.  I went to El Remate as a representative of Global Coalition for Peace, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that I helped to found three years ago. The purpose of the trip was to work with some of the native women on nutrition education and show them how to do something called intensive gardening.   Many of the people in the region suffer from poor nutrition which exacerbates the very prevalent yeast and fungus infections. The infant mortality rate is 35%.
This was my first trip to what is commonly called a "third world country"  and it was an adventure right from the start. My associate, Martha Luz Atkinson, and I flew into Belize City and traveled across the tiny country of Belize to the middle of the Peten in a small bus, about the size of a large van. All through Belize we passed small villages consisting largely of little tumbledown shacks with thatched or sheet metal roofs. There were lots of skinny children and skinny dogs in the villages and an occasional horse grazing along the road, which was inevitably also very skinny. Most of the villages had at least one nice-looking concrete house but the rest looked like a good wind would blow them over. Every single village had a church and even though it was Wednesday evening, the churches were lit and filled with people.
The road through Belize was not too bad but the quality sharply declined when we got to Guatemala. Martha Luz is from Honduras and has lived and traveled throughout Central America. I looked at her after about ten minutes of travel on this road and said, "Surely the whole rest of the trip can’t be like this, can it?"

"Yes," she said laughing. "It certainly can."

And it was. The funny thing about the roads in Guatemala is that even though they consist of large rocks, roots, and ruts that make Pittsburgh’s potholes look tame, they have frequent, rather intimidating speed bumps. Go figure.

Night fell during our bus ride and at one point I turned from my conversation with Martha Luz to look out the window. I actually gasped at the incredible starlit sky. I had never seen the sky display so many stars, so bright and seemingly close that I felt as though I could reach out and touch them.

We arrived in El Remate at about 8:30 in the evening, each of us with an oversized suitcase, and a laptop computer, and me with a large and heavy box full of seeds, books and other teaching aids. Our hostess, Anne Lossing of Project Ix-Canaan, met us where the bus dropped us off and a driver was supposed to pick us up and transport us to the lodge that would be our home for the next two weeks. The driver never showed up but, with a good deal of effort, Anne managed to recruit someone to drive all three of us to the lodge. It was not quite what I had expected.
Although I had been forewarned a few days earlier that the lodge did not have electricity, I pictured a sort of rustic version of the Hampton Inn, perhaps with gas-burning lamps or something on that order. As it turned out, the rooms in Hotel Gringo Perdido were not completely enclosed. They had concrete walls on three sides but the fourth wall consisted of a door, a half railing and a large open window over which one could pull down a heavy tarp for privacy. The floors were also concrete. The doors did not have any kind of lock or even a latch so anyone, even the lodge’s pet Labrador Retriever, could enter at will.
Anne first showed us to a group of attached rooms that sat up on a hill and had shared bathroom facilities which were on a lower level. Fortunately, Anne had a flashlight for us to navigate the multi-leveled landscape or the only light we would have had to see our accommodations would have been the beautiful starlit sky. She next led us to the dining area and showed us a second choice of rooms right next door to the kitchen.  This room had its own bathroom. Being someone whose middle-aged bladder demands to be emptied three or four times a night, I leaped on the second choice. We found out that the lodge had a generator that supplied electricity from 6:00 to 9:00 PM and each of the rooms on that level had a single light bulb over the sink. Other than that we would have to rely on a kerosene lamp for light. There was a bunk bed in our room and a double bed, both with thin mattresses over a wooden board. Fortunately, there were two single mattresses on the double bed and after a few days I put one on top of the other which was much more comfortable. Martha Luz, who had chosen the bunk bed, doubled up her mattresses as well. We did have the luxury of good mosquito nets around the beds.
When we got up the next morning, we found ourselves in the most beautiful setting imaginable. The gigantic lake, spread out in front of the lodge as far as the eye could see, was bordered by a lush variety of palm trees and tropical shrubbery. The open dining room, topped with an elegant thatched roof was beautifully decorated with Mayan masks and artwork. We walked out onto one of several docks and found the lake water to be crystal clear, warm and inviting. It was truly a tropical paradise, complete with large spiders, roaring monkeys, parrots and even an occasional scorpion (actually, we only saw one.).

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Anne arrived with a pick-up truck and driver and after a wonderful breakfast of yogurt, eggs, beans and tortillas, we set out for the village and our first meeting with the ladies we would be working with.

On that first morning, seven ladies showed up but two more joined us as the day went on. Eventually we were working with fifteen women ranging in age from thirteen to fifty. We introduced ourselves and showed them a film about intensive gardening (also known as "square foot gardening") and then we set out to find some good soil for our first planting. They did not have any pots or even paper cups in which to plant their seedlings but Anne had a supply of small plastic sandwich bags. We filled them with good rich earth from a low spot in Anne’s yard where the rains had washed both soil and some of the compost from Anne’s huge pile. Then we proceeded to the brand new library that had been built by Project Ix-Canaan, but had not yet been furnished or stocked. We spread a tarp on the floor, set our bags of dirt down and started planting our seeds.  In the afternoon we held our first nutrition class.

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For the rest of the two weeks we worked on constructing the gardens every morning and had classes every afternoon.
Square foot gardens are very small (4’ by 4’) raised beds which are framed and divided into sixteen one foot squares. Each square is planted with a different crop and as the squares are harvested, more compost is added to the soil and a new crop, of a different variety, is planted. When the frames have been made and filled with soil and compost, a permanent grid is put over the top to make the sixteen squares. This method of gardening has proven to produce five times the amount of produce on the same land area as conventional gardening. The goal of our program is to bring this method of gardening, which also requires much less water than conventional gardening, to women of the world who have limited land and water so that they can grow a variety of nutritious foods for themselves and their families. The women of El Remate have small lots around their homes which sit on the higher spots where heavy downpours during the rainy season have washed away all the good soil and left only a solid bed of limestone. As of recently, most of the homes have one spigot with running water supplied by the lake, but to haul water to a remote garden would be a problem. We wanted to put the gardens as close to their houses as possible, convenient to the water supply and also to their kitchens.

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By far the most wonderful ingredient of my Guatemalan adventure was the women of El Remate, these warm and beautiful descendents of the once-majestic Mayan nation, so strong and energetic and so eager to learn. Some of the information we brought to them, especially in the area of nutrition, was too advanced for their limited level of education. They had no understanding of protein, carbohydrates or calories. But they were willing to learn all they could. They were untiring when it came to putting in the gardens, even though we had to haul the soil from other locations and pick or sift the rocks out with wire screening. Martha Luz and I had all our meals made for us, our beds made, our laundry done, etc. and we would fall into bed in exhaustion at night. But they combined the same strenuous work with preparing meals on a wood stove, childcare, hand washing of the family laundry, walking their children to the little school about a mile from the village and all their other chores.
The women of El Remate do not have bathtubs or showers. They wash themselves in outdoor stalls with a bucket of water. Their clothes are purchased from a local woman who gets secondhand clothes from the States and re-sells them. Yet they are clean and their children are clean. I noticed that they would often return to the afternoon classes with their long black hair freshly washed and wearing a clean set of clothes.

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On the second day we asked the ladies if they would like to learn some simple exercises called yoga. They were very receptive so we showed them a few postures. Martha Luz and I are both students of the Shanti Yoga School of Life in Bethesda, Maryland. Many of the women brought their children with them to the classes and they eagerly joined in the yoga. Once they got a taste of it, the women wanted to do yoga every day. They would make every effort to do the postures to the best of their ability, laughing all the time, and by the end of the two weeks some of them were getting quite good at it and some of the kids looked like accomplished yogis.

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Another facet of our program was to introduce the women to the concept of micro-enterprise. While the first week of afternoon classes were dedicated to nutrition, the second week’s classwork consisted of some basic principles of self-employment. They were much more capable of grasping this material than the nutrition information and we left there with a dozen simple business plans.
Many of the women carve beautiful figures of animals from the native wood and their business dream is to find a bigger market for their products than the small local tourist industry can provide. Other business plans involved developing a small chicken farm, opening a book store, having a bed and breakfast, and opening a general store.
The women of El Remate are not strangers to abuse, alcoholism, rape and abandonment. We planted several different kinds of seeds there, some which, if nurtured, can bring better health and some that we hope will offer them options and put them on the road to greater self-reliance. But just planting the seeds is not enough. All too often, we are told, a project like ours comes into a third world community, gives them that seed of hope and then leaves, never to be heard from again. Just like the garden that is not cared for, the well-intentioned project that is not nurtured, will not bear fruit. So Martha Luz and I will be keeping in touch with the ladies of El Remate and, going back to that village in the Peten. We will be re-designing the nutrition component to better suit their level of education. There will be gardening problems to work out. And we are working at locating some financing to help them get their business plans off the ground. Once we procure the financing, we will help them to establish a peer lending program. There is much to do.
And what do we get for our effort? For me, getting to know the women of El Remate, has rejuvenated my belief in the dignity, industriousness and love of family that is common to women all over the world. Being the recipient of their friendship, experiencing their warmth and openness has given new meaning to the concept of "oneness. Yes, "We are all the same." I would like to thank the ladies of El Remate, for reminding me of that and giving me their precious gifts.

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Peace Be With You,

Rose

P.S. If you have any ideas on how to finance this program, we are open to suggestions (and donations). 

Global Coalition for Peace, 4217 East West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814

Dona Goya harvesting leaf lettuce March 5, 2005

 

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