FUNDEBASE and TWP: Tackling food insecurity together in Guatemala

By Valentina de Rooy, Co-Director of the Central American Program

It is with joy that we share about the beginning of a pilot collaboration with the Foundation for the Development and Strengthening of Grassroots Organizations (FUNDEBASE) of Guatemala, as part of the goals of the TWP Central American Program to expand into new territories serving the most vulnerable communities in the region.

FUNDEBASE is a non-profit organization with more than 27 years of experience contributing to the elimination of poverty, inequalities and injustices so that all people - without exclusion - especially women and children, improve their quality of life within the paradigm of the "Buen Vivir". With a holistic approach, they work alongside four territories in Guatemala; indigenous and campesinos communities (Xinka, Ixil, Kiché, and Kaqchikel), which from their perspective and agendas have prioritized the following programs: 1. Food Sovereignty for the peoples, 2. Active citizen participation for a better country, 3. Empowered women and free from violence, and 4. Children and youth growing well.

TWP and FUNDEBASE are aligned on the programmatic priorities that motivate our work, but we have been fundamentally united by the vision that changes must emerge directly from active listening to the communities’ voices, their human rights demand based struggles, and the determination of the peoples for a life lived with dignity and under their own terms. This is how our first three months of collaboration began in March 2023 with 16 families from the Chigualmop Community, municipality of Canillá, department of Quiché, Guatemala, under the framework of a broader project on “Food and Nutrition Security for Early Childhood”.

According to the Nutrition Officer at Unicef Guatemala, 49.8% of children (1 out of every 2 children) suffer from chronic malnutrition, Guatemala being the country with the highest child malnutrition in Latin America. In the Quiché Department, chronic malnutrition reaches the 87% of the population (PMA and MAGA, 2022). For this reason, we started our alliance with this ongoing project by implementing five actions: Improvement and expansion of diversified vegetable gardens; optimization of wastewater filters for crop irrigation; construction and training in the use of latrines; training for the transformation of products for self-consumption, exchange and commercialization purposes; and experiences exchanges for the dissemination of new knowledge among communities.

We ended April with the first harvest from the participating families, providing food and plants for family consumption and soon the transformation of medicinal plants into tinctures and syrups for community health. Thanks to FUNDEBASE and TWP´s collaborators for supporting these processes, and follow our social media to learn more about the progress of this initiative.

References

Unicef (2023). "En Guatemala el 49,8% de los niños sufre desnutrición crónica", María Claudia Santizo, Oficial de Nutrición en UNICEF Guatemala. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.es/noticia/en-guatemala-el-498-de-los-ninos-sufre-desnutricion-cronica-maria-claudia-santizo-oficial

Programa Mundial de Alimentos (PMA) y Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Alimentación (MAGA) (2022). Mapeo y análisis de la desnutrición crónica en Guatemala VAM 2012. Retrieved from https://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/liaison_offices/wfp253097.pdf