Advancing the Interests of Women

"Imagine washing clothes by hand for a family of 7 with water you have to carry from a kilometer away!"

As the saying goes, "Women hold up half of the sky," but do you realize that in the global South, a woman does that with a jug full of water on her head and a baby on her back? Women bear the brunt of poverty in the Sierra Madre and everywhere in the Global South. They typically have many children while suffering malnutrition and struggle to keep them well despite the poor resources the family is able to earn.

Climate change impacts women significantly and exacerbates the hardships of poverty.

In recent years irregular climate and other environmental challenges have caused subsistence crops to produce much less than normal or to fail completely. In 2015, Guatemala declared a national state of emergency when there was a widespread failure of corn crops due to prolonged drought. If a family lives in the coffee-growing region, a woman's labor in the home is vital and enables her husband to bring in the coffee crop that poor households rely on for cash needed to maintain the family. However, coffee production has been seriously damaged by climate change and environmental contamination in recent years, causing hardship in thousands of homes across the vast coffee-producing region.

These new hardships come to communities where women have to accomplish their unending household work without adequate access to water since Hurricane Stan damaged so much of the landscape in 2005.

Since 2013, Sexto Sol has been working to make life easier, especially for women, by making it possible for communities to build new water systems. There is nothing better than seeing the faces of the women when they see the water flowing again for the first time. It's always cause for celebration! We have been able to do this work with the help of our partner organization Water Charity and the support of many individual donors. Learn more about this vital work and how it is significantly changing the quality of life here. (opens new window)

Helping Women Overcome the Trauma of Domestic Violence

Emotional and psychological trauma the experience of domestic violence causes life-changing suffering in women. In Nepal, this anguish is tragically the leading cause of death among rural women who choose to take their own lives at an alarming rate.

We have requested from two well-established grassroots women's organizations for Sexto Sol to bring our International Partners for Healing training program to help them assist survivors of domestic violence. We seek foundation support to make it possible for us to provide high-quality training to health promoters in Guatemala and Nepal. The aim is to empower them to use energy psychology methods to assist women so that they can overcome the trauma and find their power to create better lives. Learn more (opens new window) about Sexto Sol's International Partners for Healing work and see who collaborates with this effort

From our archives: Work we did prior to 2010: Advocacy, helping women's enterprises, and more.

The Sexto Sol Center maintains that the women of the Sierra are "un potencial económico dormido" or a dormant economic force. We advocate for the full participation of women in all social and political activities. We have assisted women to organize productive cooperatives that allow them to contribute to the family economy. (See the article in our Coffee Crisis section).

The opening of opportunities for women must also include the awakening of women to their own value and potential. In all Sexto Sol projects, we specifically express the expectation that women be viewed as full partners in the collective businesses. We repeatedly encourage the women to speak up to express their views, to receive training, and to participate in the leadership. We have not seen men oppose this shift and on the contrary, usually support their women in moving ahead.

Attitudes at the government level are perhaps less malleable. An attempt in 1999 to assist a women's cooperative to create a commercial poultry business failed when agencies that should have provided start-up capital could not imagine that women can be entrepreneurs. We believe that the answer to the extreme poverty of the region is not more corte y confeccion workshops to train women to sew, the usual development project provided for women. In the effort to suggest a more creative view of women we have called for a regional conference on women and development, a suggestion that SEDESOL (State agency) agreed to take up.

Freeing women from chores for cottage industries

Women need financial independence. But the responsibilities of caring for children and home take up much time that is lost in tedious work like washing clothes by hand or searching for firewood. Sexto Sol promotes solar box cookers (opens new window) and other labor and tree-saving alternative technology that liberates time that can better be used to produce something that they can sell for an income.

Over the years women have come to us to ask for help to promote their products. We assist emerging cooperatives to have a good process so that they can work together. Sometimes it is not so easy when people are not accustomed to working together. But Sexto Sol exists to encourage people to find the will to overcome

In Chiapas and Guatemala, there is a huge problem with solid waste, mostly plastic. This is a great free raw material that can be made into handbags, totes, and other useful things for sale. A young woman in Nuevo Bullaj community is already making beautiful handbags (opens new window) from chip wrappers to earn for her education. Her dream is to study child psychology so she can help children at risk.

Partnerships with local agencies toward the empowerment of girls and women

Barrios Unidos por Motozintla: We are helping two groups of women to create cottage industries that will provide single mothers with income. This photo is from one of the days of consciousness-raising to help them work together for the well-being of all members.

Albergue Providencia: provides housing in Motozintla for 45 girls from mountain communities without schools. With this assistance from the Nuns of the Sisters of Providencia, girls have the opportunity to finish technical school in preparation for careers like nursing or preparatory school and go on to college. The Sisters must depend on contributions from the parents to run the school. But many parents can not afford to contribute to the cost of the food.

Since permaculture can offer solutions, we are designing a system of planters to provide growing space on the large cement patio. We have provided assistance with grant writing to the nuns in charge since 2000. We provided a workshop on granjas integrales, diversified homesteads, to the parents of these girls.

Empowering mothers of malnourished children

At the request of the Social workers at the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social, (IMSS), Dr. Brennan has provides workshops to mothers of malnourished children who participate in the Centro de Recuperacion Nutricional, (the Center for Recuperation through Nutrition). Workshops provide information to women about the intellectual and emotional needs of their young children, an introduction to child development, discussion of how to manage conflict with their spouses, and how to discipline children without violence.

For good measure, there is a good dose of the following added: An examination of the negative impact of “machismo” in the family, strong advocacy for moms to no longer enforce stereotypic gender roles for boys and girls, a suggestion that women begin to work pro-actively together to solve common problems and to end the isolation in which they usually live. The women come to Escuela Tierra Linda to learn how to grow organic food. Response to this training has been enthusiastic.

Macetas (Potted Flowers) The women collect beauty to bring into their homes. You can rely on them for that: broken Christmas ornaments arranged carefully among the photos of her children, color found in the garbage dump during war. Not so remarkable when you really think about women. Because they heard that I sell flowers, or maybe it was the chance to get seed, Flores de "Los Estados," they walked kilometers uphill to the farm, heavy and laughing out of breath. They came for flowers to plant in cans that they'll paint white with lime to repel ants and hang on a nail pounded confidently into the yielding adobe. Coins were stashed away for this purpose. This search does not know the limit of poverty. The most humble home has its flower joyfully ignoring worry. And that is how I am continually reminded to believe. Tamara Brennan, 2000 |