AMACHAJUL: Chajul, Quiche, Guatemala

 

Asociación Maya Chajulense, AMACHAJUL Chajul, Quiche, Guatemala

Committed to Education and Support for a Brighter Future

Excellence

Social Commitment

Respect for Nature and Cultural Diversity

Gender Equity

 

Asociación Maya Chajulense, AMACHAJUL

Chajul, Quiche, Guatemala

Comprometida con la Educación y Desarrollo para un brillante  futuro

Excelencia

Compromiso social

El respeto por la naturaleza y diversidad cultural

Equidad de género

About AMACHAJUL

We are a non-profit, apolitical Association, formed from the town of Chajul and different villages and hamlets of the Maya population, located in the Ixil region of northern Guatemala. We improve the quality of life for the Maya community and generate job opportunities through different projects and gender equality.

Our main activities focus on Education, Agriculture, Tourism Promotion, Handicrafts, Health and Food, with the purpose of improving the economy of the Mayan population of the lower class and generating opportunities for men and women of different Mayan ethnicity.

sobre AMACHAJUL

Somos una organización sin ánimo de lucro, Asociación apolítica, formada a partir de la población de Chajul y diferentes pueblos y aldeas de la población maya, ubicada en la región ixil del norte de Guatemala. Mejoramos la calidad de vida de la comunidad maya y generar oportunidades de empleo a través de diferentes proyectos y la igualdad de género.

Nuestras principales actividades se centran en Educación, Agricultura, Promoción de Turismo, Artesanía, la Salud y la Alimentación, con el propósito de mejorar la economía de la población maya de la clase baja y la generación de oportunidades para hombres y mujeres de diferentes etnias maya.

 

 

Purpose

• Improve the quality of life for the Maya community and generate job opportunities through different projects and gender equality.
• Train professional men and women, Mayan entrepreneurs of peasant families, responsible, honest, able to generate, innovate, apply techniques and technologies to increase sustainability by optimizing agricultural production, tourism that is a source of social and economic development , maintaining a cultural tradition through crafts, and contributing to food security, education and health.
• Support cultural and agricultural education with quality that achieves national basic and diversified requirements and achieve effective oral and written bilingualism so that students know and value their own culture.
  

  Propósito

  • Mejorar la calidad de vida de la comunidad maya y generar oportunidades de empleo a través de diferentes proyectos y la igualdad de género.
  • Formar hombres y mujeres profesionales, empresarios mayas de las familias campesinas, responsable, honesto, capaz de generar, innovar, aplicar técnicas y tecnologías para aumentar la sostenibilidad mediante la optimización de la producción agrícola, el turismo que es una fuente de desarrollo social y económico, el mantenimiento de una tradición cultural a través artesanías, y contribuyendo a la seguridad alimentaria, la educación y la salud.
  • Apoyar la educación cultural y agrícola con la calidad que alcanza los requisitos básicos y diversificados nacionales y lograr el bilingüismo oral y escrita efectiva para que los estudiantes conocen y valoran su propia cultura.

   

  

   Objectives: Promote an intercultural bilingual education to all the indigenous populations of the State who attend the basic and diversified education, as well as promote the value that diversity represents a wealth to the State and nation.

  • Optimize the use of the human, material and financial resources.
  • Ensure opportunities for access, permanence and school completion at different levels: secondary and diversified, for the Maya speakers.
  • Diversify and make more flexible educational services according to the needs and characteristics of the different groups of the population focused on young people who have disabilities and those who are in a situation of poverty.
  •  Objetivos:  Promover una educación intercultural bilingüe a todas las poblaciones indígenas del Estado que asisten a la educación básica y diversificada, así como promover el valor que la diversidad representa una riqueza para el Estado y la nación.
    • Optimizar el uso de los recursos humanos, materiales y económicos.
    • Garantizar oportunidades de acceso, permanencia y finalización de los estudios en diferentes niveles: secundaria y diversificado, para los hablantes mayas.
    • Diversificar y hacer más flexibles educativas servicios de acuerdo a las necesidades y características de los diferentes grupos de la población se centró en los jóvenes que tienen discapacidades y los que están en una situación de pobreza.

Twenty four scholarship students attend public 7^th grade evening school. The AMACHAJUL Education Casa provides enrichment, internet, tutoring and vocational skills training to the Maya Ixil Chajul scholars and for the Bridge Academy held during school vacations. Monthly Parent Education meetings are attended by parents of the scholarship students.

Veinticuatro estudiantes becados asisten 7 pública ª  escuela nocturna grado. La  Educación Casa AMACHAJUL  fuente de enriquecimiento, Internet, tutoría y capacitación profesional a los estudiosos Maya Ixil Chajul y de la Academia Puente celebrada durante las vacaciones escolares. Las reuniones mensuales de educación para padres son atendidos por los padres de los estudiantes becados.

Partnership with Parents 

Asociación con los Padres

 

Partner

Compañero

   Whole System Strategies for Holistic Organizational Advancement

Coordinated phased strategies for Holistic Organizational Development

Scaling for Good

Contact: Janet Bourque, MEd.  brightstargrants2@yahoo.com
Bright Star Grant Consultants: http://brightstarconsultants.com/ 

 

Estrategias de todo el sistema para el adelanto de la organización holística

estrategias coordinadas por etapas para el desarrollo organizacional holístico

Escalado para la buena

Contacto: Janet Bourque, MEd.  brightstargrants2@yahoo.com
Bright Star subvención consultores:  http://brightstarconsultants.com/ 

 

Girl Gardens Grow Scholarhips

Thank you for your belief in us.     Educate the Girls!! 

Opportunity to support Girl Education is at this link:

♥Vocational Scholarships for Maya Ixil Youth Guatemala

Click here to donate anytime: http://www.aktenamit.org/donate/  

Click on Maya Ixil Scholarship Fund

Most girls drop out by grade 3. They are needed to work in the home

Only a few girls finish 6th grade.  We have sacrificed to provide an education for our Daughters to finish grade 6.  Our Daughters have a passion to go to middle school.  Our families are very poor and cannot pay for the tuition, travel and school supplies.

Parents and girls met with the Maya Ixil Education Committee to ask if they could help us go to school. We want to study. We want to learn new skills. A plan was made for Girl Gardens Grow Scholars to raise money to pay for tuition and provide food for us and our families.

Families receive Seeds donated by Seed Programs International 

VEGETABLES GIVE LIVELIHOOD

Gardens start a cycle of self-sufficiency. Healthy harvests give food to eat and sell to help pay for scholarships.

Challenge

The deep poverty and high malnutrition rates in the Ixil Maya region of Guatemala results in large numbers of migrant youth who try to cross the Mexico/US border in search of work to help their families. Girls are especially vulnerable to kidnapping, rape and sex trafficking. The alternative for many poor young girls is to become a child bride.

Maya Ixil families do not have the money to pay for tuition for their girls to attend school. $50 pays for tuition and supplies for a full school year at the local Public Evening School.

Girl Gardens Grow Scholarships in vertical Gardens with recycled plastic bottles and worm compost enriched soil. We thank our partner donors for your support.  You are in our prayers every day. Please help us pay for tuition, supplies and travel to Middle school   Girl Gardens Grow Scholarships . click to donate to Maya Ixil Scholarships

Vertical Bottle Garden to raise seedlings in compost

vertical Bottle Garden to start seedlings

Chess Club

 YOUNG WOMEN from the remote mountain villages of Chel and Chajul, Guatemala are Maya Ixil Scholars at Ak Tenamit Vocational Boarding School.  They are FIRST GIRLS. It is a challenge to be a FIRST GIRL  Please partner with courage for these  young women with a donation at  

Click here to donate to Maya Ixil Scholarships

For more information contact Janet Bourque brightstargrants2@yahoo.com

Maya Ixil Education: Maya Glyph for Knowledge and Wisdom

Maya Glyph for Knowledge and Wisdom

Bright Star Philanthropy Partners

DREAMS REALIZED

COURAGE TO LIVE THE DREAM

“We are happy to achieve the goal but the truth is that it is a new experience and takes a lot of courage to be living this dream.” “We are Maya Ixil. Our home and community is Chajul, el Quiche, Guatemala. We are childhood friends who started planning for a farmers’ co-op when we were 8 years old.”

“We are now 34. Our dream was born in the year that we sat by the river bank, in a high mountain jungle, and started our planning with how to survive the armed conflict raging in our home town, and for a way to get enough food for children and old people. Our childhood dreams for the farmers’ association for Maya Ixil are now a reality.

In 2011 Manuel Laynez Anay, started the organizational work of forming a non-profit association for economic improvement, to eliminate malnutrition in the Ixil area of Guatemala, support well- being, and create job opportunities in the Maya Ixil region. They wanted to create opportunities that their parents did not have. As young people their parents were organized with a similar vision, but armed conflict prevented their achievement. They were afraid to follow their dream. They were forced from their lands where they had worked and harvested a variety of agricultural products by the fear of being beheaded, burned, hanged, shot or in every sense of the word, massacred. They fled to the jungle mountains to hide, all as a result of the internal armed conflict. One misfortune of all this is that there were many young orphans without schooling and no government support and nongovernmental organizations to support the people.

• Manuel Laynez Anay’s father was killed in the genocide massacres. 

DREAMS OF MEMORIES

Laurie Levinger, retired social worker living and writing in Vermont, between her travels to Guatemala and Spain. Laurie’s website has information about her other books, videos, and on-line testimonies. Laurie’s website

Guerra inconclusa: La voz de los sobrevivientes (Unfinished War: The Voice of the Survivors) by Laurie Levinger is a book of testimonies published in Guatemala in September 2015 (in Spanish). The book is a collection of 30 verbatim testimonies from 2005–2013. Guatemalans from many different parts of the country, from different language groups and of different ages contributed their personal stories. The book is in Spanish and is available by emailing the publisher Editorial Maya Na’oj:Sr Daniel Much, mayanaoj@gmail.com  In December 2015 books can be ordered by emailing laurie levinger: laurie@levinger.net

Bright Star Grant Consultants, Inc. serves a wide variety of clients on a global scale. For more information about our services and Bright Star Philanthropy Partner’s initiative in Central America, please contact us at: Janet @ brightstarconsultants.com

What War?

Photo by Laurie Levinger
Testimonies of Maya Survivors
http://www.levinger.net/laurie/writing/what-war/

“I remember when I was 8 years old. At that time my parents forbade me to leave the house,and nothing more than the dying could be heard. We did not know who had died”.

“When we heard the sound of gunfire near the village, my parents would not work in the field but we stayed in the house.”

“I even have a friend that can’t forget where his father died. We were around eight years old and the soldiers grabbed his father in an apple tree and burned him, still alive, in front of him.”

“It was terrible because my mom has told me that sometimes people were just thrown in the streets, with no head. There were people, already dead, but with no head, no arms, no legs. The war damaged my family because it was very hard and still today people don’t forget– at least I don’t forget– because the war marked me with that memory.”

“When I have children I will tell them how I lived. That is to help them understand that you have to appreciate yourself. But I won’t go into great depth because maybe, from my point of view, it would hurt them, maybe, their minds. But yes, I’d tell them what I went through and what happened: just like my mother told me, I also have to tell my children.”

“There is still a great deal of pain. They’re afraid, because of the war. Maybe it was because the village isn’t developed economically and intellectually because we couldn’t study, there weren’t schools then, there weren’t classes, the soldiers came and they burned the schools and the church.”

The Power of Speaking and Hearing Truth.

Laurie listens to women in Bisan, Guatemala give testimony

The experiences of Maya individuals, families and communities during the internal armed conflict have been repeated countless times in countries around the globe.The words and emotions shared in Laurie Levinger’s 2009 book, What War? Testimonies of Maya Survivors  (Cual Guerra? Testimonios de sobrevivientes Mayas) could have been given by armed conflict survivors anywhere, anytime, in any war or conflict region.

I Cannot Fail. There Are No Second Chances.

Mani+/NutriPlus has developed a Ready-To-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) that rapidly and effectively combats the specific forms of malnutrition found in Guatemala

“I cannot fail.  There are no second chances”, said Miguel Cuj: Director of Research and Nutritionist for Mani+/Nutri Plus., Guatemala

Bright Star Grant Consultants Vice President, Janet Bourque, met Miguel in January 2011 when she volunteered to teach conversational English to Mayan university students in a program sponsored by the Maya Education Foundation in Antigua, Guatemala.  Miguel is an exceptional scholar that has played a “game changing” role in relationship to hunger and malnutrition in Guatemala.  As a professional colleague and friend, Miguel shares with Bright Star Philanthropy Partners our goal of shared value solutions in collective impact poverty alleviation through innovative solutions to hunger and malnutrition.

Miguel entered and graduated from University at a time when the percent of Mayans with this achievement was so small as to be hardly counted. He accomplished this through determination, passion for making a difference in the lives of his Mayan country men, and support from organizations and mentors who recognized his brilliance. His story is one of inspiration for Mayans and for those who support them.  Here is Miguel Cuj’s story, in his own words:

“I was born during a civil war. Fear and hunger were the everyday experiences of my childhood. In my own personal and professional experience as a Maya person in Guatemala, I see that my country still suffers from violence, racism, social and economic inequality, although the conflict officially ended in 1996 with the Peace Accords. It is for this reason that my interest developed in the holistic, qualitative and quantitative social health of my country. I would like to further my research into the political, economic, and social causes that result in the high rates of malnutrition in Guatemala. “