Indigenous Population

One of CARE Guatemala's main objectives is to achieve women’s personal and economic empowerment, promoting gender equality and strengthening their access to new equitable opportunities for personal and comprehensive development through sustainable production systems, markets and inclusive and equitable public policies, which allow their participation and development as well as their families’.

Within the framework of its Food and Economic Justice for Women and Youth Program, CARE Guatemala implemented the "Strengthening the Economic Leadership of Rural Indigenous Women -Phase II" project, with funds from the Peierls Foundation, executing actions in eleven communities from the municipalities of San Lucas Tolimán and San Andrés Semetabaj, department of Sololá.

CARE Guatemala presents results from the January 1 - December 31 2023 period, in which the scope of this intervention is reported, including comprehensive actions promoting access to differentiated conditions in favor of women victims and survivors of gender-based violence and indigenous women with limited economic resources, considering that out of 161 participants, 83% are women who became aware of gender limitation conditions in their environment and later, based on their new conditions, promoted decision-making in the family and community sphere.

The project was executed combining different approaches allowing to improve living conditions of participants and their families, mainly incorporating training topics and work sessions related to i. Personal empowerment (self-esteem, leadership, autonomous decision-making); ii. Economic empowerment (economic initiatives and income generation); iii. Effective influence to comply with policies and programs in favor of women's rights, all of which contributed to improving the participants’ standard of living. The economic empowerment of women has been the main contributing factor for promoting gender equity and equality, allowing access to opportunities for comprehensive development, sustainable production systems, markets, and inclusive public policies which have promoted their participation and obtaining benefits for their economic development.

To contribute to income generation and for women’s economic autonomy, actions were carried out to establish productive units and/or value chains, which strengthened their operations, working logistics, learning digital marketing, the services they promote as a business and strengthening their organizational capabilities for economic activities. Actions implemented promoted through the example of participants, led other participating women from the communities to empower themselves personally, demanding the fulfillment of their rights and opportunities, preventing in this manner, gender-based violence in all its aspects. At the same time, the project worked with the Advocacy School application, which strengthened women's voice and leadership, based on virtual mechanisms adapted to the participants' free time. Read More...