Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Voces y Manos is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, in the heart of Central America’s dry corridor, an area particularly susceptible to climate change. Rabinal is a small town with a population of approximately 40,000 divided between a municipal seat and 53 outlying villages. Eighty percent of the population is of Indigenous Maya-Achi heritage.

Voces y Manos works in the villages surrounding areas primarily with youth aged 16-25. Our activities include an education scholarship program, leadership program, and community-based projects run by youth. Building on its experience in youth leadership, Voces y Manos recently began a climate change resiliency project that builds the capacity of 250 farming families in Rabinal’s poorest and most vulnerable communities to strengthen their ability to use climate-smart agriculture to withstand climate disruptions. Voces y Manos has worked in Rabinal and the surrounding communities since 2009 and hopes to scale its work to further communities in coming years.

The goal of Voces y Manos is to enable farming families in rural communities in Rabinal, Guatemala, to achieve climate resilience. Guatemala is one of the world‚ ten most vulnerable countries to climate change. The Dry Corridor, where Voces y Manos works, has suffered severe water scarcity, crop failures and malnutrition in recent years. In 2018, Voces y Manos conducted participatory design sessions with local farming communities to identify strategies to help farmers confront this enormous challenge. Among other findings, these community dialogues helped identify a range of highly valued cultural practices connected to the land that Maya-Ach elders fervently hoped to pass along to the next generation. The project described herein leverages Voces y Manos‚ expertise with youth empowerment in order to support climate change resilience. It does so through a specific focus on youth people, community-building, and Maya-Ach ancestral knowledge.

By directly engaging Maya-Ach youth in efforts to revive ancestral agricultural practices of Maya communities, the project builds community capacity with a range of agriculture techniques including: water conservation, promoting healthy soil, crop diversification, animal husbandry, and installation of efficient cookstoves. The implementation of these agro-ecological practices is expected to enhance climate resilience by substantially improving the water retention capacity of soil, reducing crop loss, improving incomes, and improving nutrition.

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This project is specifically targeted to help the most vulnerable farmers in Maya-Achi communities withstand the impacts of climate change. In many cases, Maya-Achi farmers lack the resources to be able to implement relatively low-cost solutions, such as installing drip irrigation systems, high-efficiency cookstoves, or cover crops. This project provides these vital resources. However, what makes this project truly unique is that it seeks to engage entire communities in empowering, community-building processes. 
Agriculture is of vital importance in the Maya-Achi culture: practices of cultivating the land, harvesting produce, and preparing traditional dishes bring communities together across generations. Yet we have seen that many projects in the region do not take an intergenerational approach, instead narrowly targeting their efforts to particular vulnerable age groups, such as children under 5, elders, or pregnant women. While such targeted efforts are important, what has been lost is a focus on the community as a whole, and the important need to support Indigenous communities in passing along cultural practices to future generations. 

Thus, one of the unique features of this project is that it seeks to use land-based practices as a strategy for promoting community cohesion. To this end, we see youth empowerment as a critically important strategy for strengthening cultures and communities.

Building on Voces y Manos 14 years experience in youth leadership, the project will train and support a cadre of Maya-Achi youth (at least 50% young women): these youth will first study agroecology with practices from master practitioners in their communities and the Voces y Manos staff, and then teach these practices to their neighbors. Engaging youth in this way is particularly important, because recent years have seen record levels of out-going migration from Rabinal and other rural Guatemalan communities. This not only poses a serious health and safety risk to migrant youth, but also means that land-based cultural practices are at risk of being lost. 

By engaging youth people in working alongside seasoned farmers in the region, this project builds a foundation for long-term sustainability, ensuring that culturally relevant sustainable farming practices are passed onto the next generation.

Finally, it is important to note that the composition of the Voces y Manos staff reflects the diversity of the population we serve, with all of our staff belonging to the Maya-Achi ethnic group.

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