To read our August 2016 newsletter, click here. - Co

August 2016 Newsletter
Co-partners of Campesinas
901 Second Street, Alexandria, VA 22314
E-mail: [email protected]
703-548-6713
www.copartners.org
Co-partners of Campesinas is a US based, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that supports the Asociación de Desarrollo Comunal de Mujeres La Nueva Esperanza (New Hope)
and other associations working for women’s and youth education and empowerment in developing countries in Latin America. New Hope is an organization of sixty rural girls
and women from impoverished communities near Ilobasco, El Salvador, who meet weekly to learn income-producing skills and advance the education of members and their
children. Co-partners also supports women’s associations in Apastepeque and Cojutepeque El Salvador and the Asociación de Desarrollo Comunitario (ASDECO), an
indigenous organization serving women and children in and around the market town of Chichicastenango.
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Leadership Workshops: by Archer Heinzen
During this year’s July-August volunteer trip to El
Salvador and Guatemala, I provided leadership
workshops in Cojutepeque and Apastepeque in El
Salvador and a workshop on self-esteem in Guatemala.
Providing leadership workshops to the two groups in
El Salvador was important this year, because they are
close to becoming legal entities as Asociaciónes de
Desarrollo Comunal (ADESCOs). Legalization,
although it imposes reporting requirements, is the only
way for a group to open a bank account and to sit on
municipal commissions. In Apastepeque the statutes
for the ADESCO have been approved by the mayor’s
office and are ready to be published in the Diario
Oficial. Cojutepeque is not as far along with their
statutes as we had hoped and the mayor’s office seems
to lack familiarity with the process. To help, copies of
the statutes for Ilobasco and Apastepeque were given
to the president of the Cojutepeque group.
coordinates the distribution of Co-partners’
scholarships (school supplies for children, basic
education support for adults and support for nursing
students) and each year participates in a leadership
workshop. This year the Network distributed 349
school supplies scholarships, each containing the
required 17 small notebooks, (some lined, some
unlined, some with graph paper) a box of crayons, nine
pencils (black, red and blue), a pencil sharpener and an
eraser.
Their workshop request this year was for training in
self-esteem. Workshops in Chichi are always a
challenge because more than half of the members of
the network are non-literate, Quiche-speakers, so I
have to work through the Quiche-Spanish, bilingual
members.
Since workshops which have to be
interpreted often lack spontaneity, it is necessary to use
a lot of dinámicas or game-like learning, a much loved
part of training in Central America.
A dinámica that involves pasting words on each other’s backs
Role playing in leadership training
The Women’s Network of
the Asociación de
Desarrollo Comunitario
(ASDECO) in the
municipality of Chichicastenango, Guatemala,
The topic of self-esteem revealed important
information. In talking about what they didn’t like
about themselves, the women consistently named their
inability to speak Spanish and to write. Exploring how
these deficits might be overcome, I learned that the
available distance education program that requires
listening to radio broadcasts Monday through Friday
and meeting with a teacher at a centralized location on
Sundays does not work for indigenous women because
Sunday is their most important day for selling in the
market and earning additional money. I further learned
that the Network had lost its funding and they had not
been able to meet since January! We cut the training
short to give them time for a meeting where they
quickly developed a training proposal to present to Copartners. We agreed to provide funding until the end of
the year, with 2017 funding contingent on adequate
reporting during the rest of 2016. We now have our
work cut out for us in figuring out how to involve an
itinerant teacher/program coordinator to travel to
students who are not able to attend Sunday classes.
Although Co-partners in-person training programs are
short, usually one or two days, they provide an
important opportunity for us to understand better the
people and communities we are supporting.
Diplomas Awarded in Ilobasco: The Centro La
Nueva Esperanza graduated 26 students from the first
semester classes: seven in basic computing, five in
cosmetology, seven in electricity, and seven in
English. Dressmaking students will receive diplomas
when they complete the second half of the course.
Scholarship Students: Students in both countries are
doing well. In Guatemala, Co-partners funded
scholarships for four community nursing students in a
one-year program preparing health care workers
similar to Licensed Practical Nurses. The program
responded to the need to have someone with basic
health knowledge in isolated communities. But getting
additional education makes one want even more, and
our four scholarship students are now hoping to
continue on to universities. We trust that they will
maintain their community connections.
Request for Additional English Training:
The intensive English classes that Ned and Lydia
Stone have taught in Chichicastenango for the last
seven years have resulted in a request for Co-partners
to provide short-term English training to 400 teachers
to prepare them to teach Guatemala’s new trilingual
(indigenous language + Spanish + English) curriculum.
Our ability to respond to the request is under
consideration. We would need a lot of additional
volunteers to meet the demand. Interested?
Demographic and Satisfaction Studies Underway in
Ilobasco and Surrounding Communities.
Douglas Mejia, a social worker who has served as a
co-trainer in youth leadership training is in the process
of analyzing demographic data collected from Ilobasco
vocational students at the beginning of 2016 and
questionnaires filled out by students at the end of the
semester. Look for results in the November newsletter.
Improved bookkeeping. Jim Heinzen, Co-partners
treasurer, and Juan Rene Guzman, El Salvador
volunteer, spent four days working with the Asociación
La Nueva Esperanza (ALNE) bookkeeper and board
members helping them better understand budgeting
and which classes are paying their way and which
should be discontinued. As a result of these discussions
they were able to develop a budget for the second half
of the year—no mean accomplishment considering the
limited formal education and lack of experience of
many board members.
Nursing students, supported by Co-partners scholarships, who
will graduate at the end of the year..
Teaching the board of the Asociación La Nueva Esperanza to
work with spread sheets.