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. “