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Help Maya Youth Stop Coronavirus

As a community that has faced war, oppression, and chronic underfunding of the healthcare system, COVID-19 poses a particularly grave threat to the community of Rabinal, Guatemala, where Voces y Manos has worked since 2008. While government-mandated social distancing has helped slow the spread of the disease, it has taken a sharp economic toll on Maya families who have long relied on the ability to travel from one town to the next to sell the food they grow and the products they make. Many Maya families were already living on the cusp of hunger before the coronavirus outbreak. Now, as coronavirus takes a severe economic toll, the risk of hunger and malnutrition is heightened. These families will not receive adequate relief money or food aid to stave off the risk of worsening poverty and hunger. 

Under these conditions, community-level health promotion and mutual assistance is critical. Young people in Voces y Manos are coming together to help prevent the spread of coronavirus and provide vital assistance to the most vulnerable families and individuals in their community. Their acts of solidarity are part of a long legacy of indigenous resilience and survival in the face of unimaginably difficult circumstances.  

Let’s stand with them as they support the members of their community most vulnerable to the crisis. 

Voces y Manos’ Youth Response

The young people in Voces y Manos and their adult allies have developed a plan to promote the health and wellbeing of their communities. 

Thanks to the generous support of an anonymous donor, funds raised through this campaign will be matched dollar for dollar up to $10,000. Voces y Manos’ youth will use these resources to identify rural families facing the most severe economic difficulties and provide them with deliveries of basic food supplies. The project will also promote food sovereignty by providing young people and families with their own native seeds so that they can diversify the crops they grow. It will support coronavirus prevention by equipping young people to create and share health information over social media. Finally, it will pay local tailors to produce masks and help distribute them to the population.  In all, this project will help prevent the virus’s spread and promote health and wellbeing for over 600 people.  

How it Will Work

The strong community you have helped us build in Rabinal over the past decade means that Voces y Manos has a strong mutual aid network in place that we will be able to mobilize to respond to the current COVID-19 crisis. Here are the three steps to the project: 

1) Voces y Manos youth will create posters, memes, and videos with medically accurate information on how to stop the spread of coronavirus. Youth have already begun this work by creating health education posters and placing them in prominent locations in their community (see images below.) All these activities will be done with the utmost caution to ensure youth are not putting themselves or others at risk. Because schools have closed, these activities also provide youth with a socially and academically engaging activity to do from home. 

2) Voces y Manos youth will provide two deliveries of basic food/hygiene supplies to families in Rabinal's most remote areas -- one in May, and another in June or July. Materials will be purchased locally to support small business owners. Because Voces y Manos’ youth themselves live in Rabinal’s most remote communities, they will be well equipped to identify families and individuals most in need.

3) Voces y Manos will provide each student in the program with a variety of native seeds so that they can start (or expand) small backyard vegetable gardens in their homes. Preserving the hundreds of varieties of seeds Maya communities have cultivated over thousands of years is vital to improve nutrition, and strengthen indigenous food sovereignty. This is especially important given that Rabinal is located in the dry corridor of Central America, a region vulnerable to drought. These practices will help families who rely on farming for their subsistence not only to weather the coronavirus outbreak, but also adapt to a changing climate.

Why It Matters 

During this time of incredible hardship, let’s remember we are all in this together. Your contributions — matched dollar for dollar — will help rural indigenous families who do not have the benefit of any form of insurance or relief during these difficult times. Thank you for your solidarity and support! 

About Voces y Manos

Voces y Manos is a youth development organization that empowers Maya youth to work for food sovereignty, health and wellbeing in their communities. We work in close partnership Guatemalan parent organization, Fundación Nueva Esperanza, which operates a school that provides bilingual (Spanish/Mayan), culturally relevant education to children whose parents survived the violent, state-sponsored genocide against the Mayan population in the 1980s. Over the course of their 10-year collaboration, Voces y Manos and Fundación Nueva Esperanza have provided over 100 high school scholarships, 10 college scholarships and overseen the implementation of more than 20 youth-led community projects. By supporting Voces y Manos, you are supporting youth from indigenous communities in their journey to become empowered community leaders.

Our students thank you for your support!
 
To learn more, Visit Voces y Manos’ official website 

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Voces y Manos is a 501(C) 3 public charity based in California. All funds raised are managed and distributed by our US-based nonprofit. As a small organization, we are able to ensure that your donation goes directly to supporting our students.

Donations 

  • Jonathan Jacobs
    • $50 
    • 4 yrs

Organizer

Michael Bakal
Organizer
Berkeley, CA
Voces Y Manos Por El Derecho A La SALUD
 
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.

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