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Helping rural people create solutions for their families and communities
Celebrating 12 years of service to the communities
The Sexto Sol Center for Community Action contributes to the elimination of poverty and the restoration of the damaged environment by promoting cooperative enterprise, environmentally sound agriculture, appropriate technology and conservation. We work in the Sierra Madre region of Chiapas, Mexico and with repatriated refugee communities in Guatemala. Through our internship program we train others to do this work elsewhere.
The world is our classroom for practicing compassion. The Sexto Sol Center for Community Action serves impoverished communities in Chiapas and Guatemala where a change of vision and technical assistance can help them create a better life. Since 1997 we have assisted people to: create success with cooperative businesses, grow healthful food, improve neglected schools for their children, regain cultural pride, protect the watershed, create eco-villages and heal from trauma of disaster and war. We lobby internationally for the respect of indigenous human rights and environmental and economic justice. We hope to inspire others to exercise of their own compassion be they our supporters, volunteers or interns. We work in one corner of the world to in a way we hope ripples out beyond.
According to the Mayan calendar, the world is entering the Sixth Sun,
It is possible to create a sustainable world in which all people live with dignity and enjoy good health in harmony with nature. It starts with imagining a future for our world in which all Earth's creatures live in harmonious relationship. We are the solution. But changing the world is not a spectator sport. We encourage you to find ways to do your part.
come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman
Thank you to Shawn Gallaway at www.ichooselove.org for this inspirational message. To view the video, you need adobe flash player, click here.
A Call for Solidarity: Help us raise 3,000 dollars to repair dilapidated schools.
We have received a grant from Water Charity to install a much needed system to eliminate seasonal flooding at a school serving 280 elementary school children. We need 1,500 dollars in matching funds to make this possible in January.
We have just received an urgent request to repair a school where freezing wind blows through the floor boards making study a hardship for the 150 children without proper clothing or shoes.
Improving Education as a solution to the root causes of economic migration
In such an impoverished region as the Sierra Madre, people immigrate in search of work when they feel that there is no other opportunity to keep their families fed, earn money to build a house or start a business. Even though most poor families must rely on the money sent home from the U.S., construction and other jobs normally done by undocumented workers are disappearing due to the recession. Immigrants are returning home to an uncertain future.
Since 1997 the Sexto Sol Center has provided people with the tools they need to build a better life at home so that they would not have to immigrate. As a strategy to end the cycle of economic migration, Sexto Sol now works with teachers and parents in poor communities to make important improvements to neglected schools. By improving schools that have languished in disrepair for years, and providing them with books, the children will receive an education that will prepare them to create their own opportunities.
Our thanks to Cheryl Ridsdale-Shimanskey, Alex Breitenberger and for recent fundraisers!
Cheryl and friends raise funds recycling trash from our Adopt-a-highway in tribute to actor Edward James Olmos.
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