empowerment Archives - Friendship Bridge

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March 13, 2023 / Comments Off

How The Women of Friendship Bridge Embrace Equity

International Women’s Day:

Handmade by Friendship Bridge® employees and clients embrace equity in a gender unequal country

Travel to any of Guatemala’s larger cities such as Quetzaltenango, Antigua, or Guatemala City, and you’ll find opportunities for women in education, careers, and as decision makers in society. But Guatemala’s rural communities still tend to function under traditional patriarchal systems where women have less of a voice. According to the UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), violence, in various forms, continues to impact the population, with women, girls and adolescents disproportionately affected. Cases of femicide and missing women have increased. In addition, Guatemala ranks 113th out of 146 countries in gender equality, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, making it the most gender unequal country in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This is where Friendship Bridge comes in, with the goal of empowering more women and eliminating poverty across all areas of Guatemala. 89% of the women we serve come from rural communities. The following women work with Handmade by Friendship Bridge®—two as employees and two as artisans the organization serves. This year for International Women’s Day, learn what they’ve overcome and how they are working to #EmbraceEquity in different ways.

Siona
Age: 23
Job: Product Assistant at Handmade by Friendship Bridge®

Siona, an indigenous Mayan young woman, remembers living in poverty at age four. “We had no house, nothing to eat, my dad drank a lot of alcohol and hardly cared about the family, and I had no toys or clothes,” Siona remembers. “My mom worked making huipiles, but it took her a month to make one. It was a very hard time for me and my siblings. When my father stopped drinking (I was 8 years old) he worked hard [as a boat driver], but there was still not enough money because there were five children at that time. Even then, if more than one of us got sick at a time, my mother could not go to the doctor because she did not speak Spanish, and we didn’t have enough money.”

Siona’s parents did give her the opportunity to stay in school (many of her peers had to drop out in order to work) and she attended the MAIA Impact School in Panajachel, Central America’s first secondary school for rural indigenous young women. Through MAIA, she applied for an internship at Friendship Bridge, and afterward was offered a full-time job. In 2022, she began working for the organization’s artisan program, Handmade by Friendship Bridge®, as Product Assistant. She plays a critical role in working directly with HMBFB®’s artisans, using her knowledge of Spanish and Kaqchikel to help them develop new products in addition to quality assurance, placing and receiving orders, packing for export to the US, and more.

“Being at [Friendship Bridge] is one of the best opportunities I have had. I am living new experiences and I am growing with new knowledge as a person and as a professional. My life has taken a complete 180 degree turn—now I can support my family, pay for my own university classes, and buy my own things. Handmade by Friendship Bridge® has given me the opportunity to learn English, meet new people, and above all, have the opportunity to work with artisan clients. I thank [Friendship Bridge] for trusting in my abilities and giving me the opportunity to work.”
—Siona, Handmade by Friendship Bridge® Product Assistant

How Siona’s job helps her #EmbraceEquity: “Friendship Bridge not only empowers the clients, but also us as employees. We have the opportunity to make decisions and start projects; we just need to trust ourselves since inequality has always existed. But we can change it as we come to value ourselves more. I can break stereotypes both in the family and in society. Working there also helps me be an example for more girls, adolescents and even for other women to want to improve themselves.”

Siona’s hopes for the future: “I would like to finish fixing up [my family’s] house and for all my siblings to finish school; to see them become great professionals and excel. I’d like to be able to pay for a trip for my parents to go to another place or country. I would like to graduate from college, continue studying, get a job as a manager, buy a motorcycle, have my own house, and travel to another country.”

Erika
Age: 34
Job: Textile business owner

Erika lives in Quetzaltenango in the Guatemalan highlands, where most residents make a living in agriculture. The only girl among five brothers, she enjoyed helping with her family’s trade. Her father was a tailor; her mother, a weaver and seamstress. Erika was fortunate to complete high school while many around her had to drop out to help support their families.

After finishing high school, Erika took a year off to consider college, but a surprise pregnancy changed her plans. Instead she got married at 20 to a shoemaker, then suffered the tragic loss of her first child.

She and her husband combined their skills to start their own textile business. She loves designing products for her clients, and is skilled at making quality travel bags from leather and repurposed Guatemalan textiles. Business challenges come when she can’t find enough of certain recycled materials to fulfill an order, but her work has allowed her to overcome challenging financial circumstances.

How Erika’s job helps her #EmbraceEquity: “Thanks to my business and the help of my family, my job makes me an equal. I contribute to my family finances and I don’t depend exclusively on my husband providing for me. I can support the needs of my home, my own needs, and those of my children.” Erika takes advantage of business training offered through Handmade by Friendship Bridge®, and has explored training with The Academy of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE), sponsored by the U.S. Embassy.

Erika’s hopes for the future: “I hope to have my own house (she lives with her in-laws); that my children will become professionals; and that my business will continue to grow.”

Shop Erika’s Handmade Products

Indira
Age: 24
Job: Communications and Visual Design Coordinator at Handmade by Friendship Bridge®

Since Indira was a young girl, she’s been drawn to color, design, art, and photography. She expanded on these interests with a degree in Communications and Design at Universidad Galileo in Guatemala; she is the first person in her family to go to college. She currently lives with her mom and two brothers (17 and 13) in Panajachel, Sololá, and is the primary income contributor in her family. Recently, she lost both her grandmother and father, with whom she lived, and it’s been the hardest time of her life. She is learning to cope by working hard and expressing her emotions, and also by studying and sharing as much time as possible with family.

Indira started working at Friendship Bridge in 2019, after college, in the Handmade by Friendship Bridge® program. “Most of the artisans I work with are operating businesses within beading (jewelry), sewing/textiles, weaving, basket-making. My favorite part of my job is to develop creative ways to promote the artisans’ work. I love it when I make the artisans laugh and capture their beautiful smiles in a photograph. With my creative skills, I am looking to drive positive change in causes such as sustainable production, poverty eradication, and economic growth.”

How Indira’s job helps her #EmbraceEquity: “My job helps me feel that I can deal with everything. Through the inspiring stories of the artisans, I remember that every woman is brave and strong and we just need to work hard on whatever we want. My work is one of my safe places—here, I can be who I am. Through my daily tasks and projects, I feel fulfilled and capable. It feels good to be an independent woman in a world for men. My heart rejoices in the realization that I can support my family and that I have a way to keep striving to get my brothers and mom ahead. Everyday I feel a bit more empowered and now I try to empower every woman I meet.”

Indira’s hopes for the future: “I hope to achieve a masters degree that I already started, and I’m also hoping to support my brothers to go to college and be professionals. I have also set out to achieve all of my father’s dreams for us that he couldn’t achieve. I don’t know how yet, but I’m sure that some day, my family and I will have our own house here in Panajachel. I’m also sure that some day I will become a mother, and I want to be as loving as my parents have been to me. The further I get, the further my family will go, too.”

Elena
Age: 47
Job: Weaver and Entrepreneur

A member of the Tz’utujil Mayan ethnic group, Elena grew up near coffee plantations. As one of seven children, she began working at age eight and only went to school through 4th grade. Her mother taught her to weave as a child and she has good memories of “cutting coffee” on the plantation.

Elena married at age 20, worked in a restaurant for six years, then started her own textile business, and had four children along the way. She’s known for weaving a variety of unique scarfs, blouses, and ponchos. She loves working with other artisans and being able to create what she likes, but competition is a challenge for her business. She also wishes she could afford to sell her products abroad; standard shipping fees make it too expensive for her.

How Elena’s job helps her #EmbraceEquity: “There is cooperation of everyone in my family to work together.” Once, Elena participated with a group of women in the Women’s Office of the City Hall in San Juan La Laguna, where the mayor invited her to represent her neighborhood. Together with other women, she helped identify opportunities for the artisan sector. Elena believes that the participation of women in decision-making spaces is important: “In order to develop the artisan sector, I think it is important that the women have the opportunity to have a direct artisan market, both inside the community and outside it. I hope that we can all earn a monthly income, so that we can better support our families and our people can be more prosperous.”

Elena’s hopes for the future: Elena hopes to finish her online store and be able to ship some products independently at a lesser cost. She’s proud that her three daughters are now bilingual secretaries at a chocolate factory, and can put their English skills into practice in customer service.

Shop Elena’s Handmade Products

June 28, 2016 / Comments Off

Non-Formal Education: Savings, Loan Responsibilities, and a 6-month Review (Spring 2016)

A special thanks to our Cada Mes Club – Friendship Bridge’s monthly donors – for supporting our clients on their monthly journeys.

Each month the members of every Trust Bank travel, most likely by foot, to their designated meeting places to make payments on their loans and receive a Non-Formal Education lesson in their native languages on one of the four pillars – women, family, business, and health.

April – Getting into a savings habit

We all know that putting a little away for a rainy day is a good idea. In reality, creating a savings habit is hard work. Accordingly, the women start off April’s lesson by listing all the reasons we don’t save. These are the hurdles they will need to overcome if they are going to start saving. Next their Facilitator provides them with a four step plan: 1) Name a specific goal (home, education, health). 2) Estimate how much that goal will cost. 3) Set a date at which the goal is to be achieved. And 4) Calculate how much you will need to save weekly or monthly in order to meet the goal amount. Each woman goes home that day with a liter soda bottle “bank” that has her personal answers to the four steps written on a label on the side of the bottle.

May – Accepting a loan and what that means

In May, the women reviewed the process they underwent to form their Trust Bank: from a single woman’s initial idea, to the sharing of that idea to recruit other women, to the meeting they had with a Facilitator for the first time. The question today is, “Why did you go through so much effort to acquire that first loan?” To answer that question, the women are given four images that represent the stages of plant cultivation and are asked to put them in order: sow, water, sprout, sunshine. Next the women explore the various ways that their loan is like a seed used to grow the fruits of their businesses. The women learn that accepting a loan to finance a cash short-fall does not generate an ability to repay the loan. Using a loan as an investment in a business, however, can.

June – Reviewing the past six months’ lessons

The Facilitator starts the June lesson asking the women to raise their right hands. Lo and behold, they all do. Their actions are the definition of a habit. Changing a habit requires motivation and determination. If the women are going to advance their businesses, discarding old habits is going to be necessary. Accordingly, the women reflect as a group on the goals they have set for themselves since joining their Trust Bank and what might be getting in their way of achieving those goals – it is most likely old habits. The Facilitator asks questions such as: What do you do if someone offers you additional credit? How about when your expenses are greater than your sales? Have you created a budget yet? Or put any money away for an emergency? The women go around the room answering these questions, offering each other advice regarding behavior change.

Here are a few client reactions:

“The topic about savings is really important. The examples we used today can help us find different ways to implement it with our family. Starting today I want to create a savings plan for one month so I can buy a set of pots that I need to cook fruit that I use in my business.”
- Keila, age 26

“It is important that every woman has a reserve fund through savings, because our children come first to us for school supplies. Friendship Bridge also makes us realize the value of our own health and to invest in ourselves, so our savings can help us get medical checkups.”

- Maria, age 47, pictured in middle in red

Our Non-Formal Education program is the backbone of our Microcredit Plus program, and one of the Plus services that we feel truly empowers our clients. Thanks again to our Cada Mes Club for helping support this program!

February 11, 2016 / Comments Off

Zika Virus, a Reminder for Women’s Empowerment

by Jessica Kutz, Friendship Bridge field intern

As the magnitude of the Zika virus increases, we are left with a question: What do we do now? In the case of women in the United States that means visiting your local gynecologist, deciding on a contraception option, and being thankful you don’t live in Central America. Grupos de Chupol 053 (2)-4

Why thankful? Because many women in Central America face numerous obstacles to controlling their reproductive health. The two main barriers are a culture of discrimination toward women and lack of access to adequate healthcare and contraception. This means that battling Zika and taking the correct precautions isn’t necessarily an option for most women in Central America

With a strong patriarchal culture in countries like Guatemala, women have few choices in regard to their reproductive health. Husbands often feel that they should be in control of their family size, and therefore they restrict whether a woman is able to use contraception. There is also a widespread sentiment that women are being unfaithful if they feel the need to use contraception, and this can anger husbands. Unfortunately, anger usually translates into domestic violence. In fact, gender-related violence is at an all-time high in Guatemala, which ranks third in the world for femicide – defined as “the murder of a person based on the fact that she is female. ”

In addition to this inherent discrimination against women, healthcare access is also a major challenge that disproportionately affects women, particularly those in rural communities. Staff in health clinics do not generally speak the local Mayan languages, making health education and access to resources particularly difficult for Mayan women who speak one of Guatemala’s 24 indigenous languages. As a result of this lack of education and access to women’s healthcare, Guatemala also has the lowest contraception usage rate in all of Central America. Guatemala was one of five countries that actually ran out of contraception in 2015.

This is why Friendship Bridge believes so strongly in working solely with women, especially indigenous women in rural communities. Friendship Bridge aims to empower women through microcredit, education, and health services. In particular, our Salud para la Vida program for women’s preventive health is overcoming obstacles like those mentioned above through health education and access to culturally sensitive preventive health services for our clients. Salud para la Vida provides women with family planning options, which allows them to take control of their reproductive rights. We are ensuring our clients are empowered to remain in control of their health when health crises like Zika hit.

October 20, 2015 / Comments Off

Our Dreamer Clients: Cruz

Dreamer: The earliest stage of development on our Client Continuum. Dreamers are often new to the Friendship Bridge program. Most of them are just beginning to experience increased confidence and family decision-making. Their priorities are usually beginning to shift from basic survival to education for their children and healthier standards of living. Not surprisingly, one of the first things they do with their earnings is provide better nutrition for their families and put their children in school.

Born into a poor family of 11 children, Cruz did not have many aspirations for her life. Her father struggled with alcoholism and did not support the family, so rather than attend school, Cruz had to work every day in the fields to ensure her family had enough food to eat.

Cruz’s life followed the typical pattern of a Guatemalan woman, and she married young, at age 18. She had seven children, but two died very young. Because she had not attended school, Cruz learned to weave in order to support her family, like her mother had done. “I had to accept learning my mom’s job, and now it has become my business. I am grateful for my mother’s teachings. She fought very hard for me and my sister to become good weavers.”

However, in order to give her daughters a chance for a better future, Cruz needed more capital to grow her business. She heard about Friendship Bridge from two women in her community who were Friendship Bridge clients, and she applied for a loan and joined a Trust Bank. In addition to her loan, Cruz says the monthly Non-Formal Education sessions have been very valuable, and she has especially benefited from trainings on health, hygiene, family planning, self-esteem, and wise investing.

With her Friendship Bridge loans, Cruz has been able to grow her small weaving business and send her five daughters to school. She is proud of giving them a chance at a better future, and Cruz says her experience with Friendship Bridge has brought her much satisfaction and joy. “Thanks to my small business and my loans, I am improving my quality of life,” she says. Cruz is also proud that she and her husband have been able to build a larger home to create more space for their family and her business.

“Friendship Bridge has been instrumental in my journey to create a business and generate income. My entire family has benefited from my loans,” says Cruz. The loans and the education Friendship Bridge offers have increased Cruz’s confidence as a woman and given her more hope for her future, key characteristics of our Dreamer clients.

July 9, 2015 / Comments Off

Tomassa and Sanidad Divina

photos and story collected by Robert Weigel, Kiva Field Intern

The first thing you notice about Tomassa is the warmth and the pride that practically radiate from her when she speaks. As we waited for her Trust Bank meeting to begin, she welcomed us into her home as if we were long-lost friends.

She shared a little bit of her story as we waited for the rest of her Trust Bank to arrive. Tomassa speaks little Spanish, so a translator bridged the conversation from her native language of K’iche. Tomassa is the oldest of five children, and at age 38 she herself has mothered ten children.

One by one the members of her Trust Bank, Sanidad Divina (Divine Healing), arrived at the meeting place. It was obvious the women were excited to be together at their monthly meeting. Tomassa and the rest of the Trust Bank listened intently as the Facilitator led an education session about proper family planning.

As the Non-Formal Education session ended, Tomassa remarked that this topic was one of her favorites that she has learned about so far. “I cherish these meetings greatly,” she said, “because as a child I never experienced any type of formal education.” As the oldest child in her family, Tomassa said she had to mature quickly and take responsibility for household chores as her father tended to the fields and her mother took care of her siblings.

Life as a Guatemalan woman was difficult, she said, but it got better when she met her future husband, a hard-working boy from her village. Tomassa said she and her husband have supported and loved each through many difficult times. She smiled and said he is the love of her life.

Tomassa’s smile widened when she recounted to us how a financial and supportive push from Friendship Bridge gave her the chance to begin her animal husbandry business. She currently owns twelve animals – two pigs, four turkeys, and six chickens. It was clear she took great pride in her work.

With her face constantly beaming with joy and her voice full of pride when she talked about her business and what she has learned through Friendship Bridge’s educational sessions, we couldn’t help but get excited, too. Here was an empowered woman who was creating a better future for herself and her family, a future she could be proud of.

November 7, 2014 / Comments Off

Education Teaches Clients Concepts for Success

Two clients review a handout during non-formal education in a trust bank meeting.

Non-formal education (NFE) is a lifeline for more than 22,000 Friendship Bridge clients. In addition to the monetary resources Friendship Bridge clients receive for their businesses, topics like “empowerment,” “avoiding over-indebtedness” and “children having children” speak to the realistic environment of women in rural Guatemala. While the training for clients is considered “non-formal,” the curriculum for how to facilitate learning on key topics is quite strategic and specific.Country Director Astrid Yerlin Cordona Morán de Paiz said the program teaches the women about what it means to be respected, financially wise and healthy, as a woman, as a wife, a mother and a business owner.

Topics are developed two years in advance to provide strategic direction but the timing of delivery is flexible according to client surveys. Timely topics that are immediately applicable to clients, such as the real dangers of child migration to the U.S., are pushed to clients as quickly as possible. Reports indicate that 80 percent of clients attend sessions of 45 minutes to an hour during their monthly Trust Bank meetings. Trust Banks are solidarity groups of seven to 30 women who co-guarantee the loans of their fellow members.

A flip chart with pictures and an accompanying training guide for the facilitator are the main tools used to lead the conversation. The Learning Network, a group of facilitators who represent one of each of the six Friendship Bridge branches, meets monthly to rehearse topics a month prior to deployment in the field. This group then replicates the activity within their respective branches so that all facilitators are trained on how to deploy the next month’s topic and can anticipate client concerns and dynamics. After the topic has been introduced in the field, The Learning Network relays client and facilitator feedback to the Education Manager for future revisions.

To continually improve the quality of the education sessions, all Friendship Bridge facilitators will take a 60-hour module developed by Freedom From Hunger, a long-time partner. The course will end with a certificate of completion for each unit, which covers information related to health, nutrition, business and managing money.

September 26, 2014 / Comments Off

From the Field: A KIVA blog

By Amanda Schweikert, KIVA intern

A loan officer asks a question during a Trust Bank meeting

A loan officer asks a question during a client meeting.

After two and a half hours of travel on three different chicken buses, I make it to Santa Cruz del Quiché, a bustling town in southern Guatemala. In a quieter neighborhood, seven businesswomen partnered to create a Friendship Bridge Trust Bank called “Laguna Las Garzas” or lagoon of the heron. They are all Maya Kiché and show off their cultural pride with beautiful traditional costume in bright colors and patterns.

All of the women are extraordinarily welcoming. The members are curious about me—asking where I am from and how is my life in Guatemala, all while wearing giant smiles on their faces. Because these ladies average two years of formal schooling, the education they receive along with the loans as part of the “Microcredit Plus” program is highly valued. Though I can’t understand the majority of their talk in the traditional Mayan language Kiché, it is obvious that they are very invested in improving their futures and that of their families.

Lucia in particular stands out. The president of the Trust Bank, Lucia is a clear leader in her community, offering help to those around her and conversing with new friends as she walks to the Friendship Bridge office. She is married and has one child, a 15-year-old. After attending school for three years thanks to family contributions, Lucia was forced to discontinue her education and began to work. Therefore, she is very pleased that her son is currently in school and will have more opportunities than she received.

Lucia runs a restaurant, which she has owned for 13 years, and serves the residents of Quiché as well as several customers from outside of the town. She employs a young woman to assist her in the restaurant. This very motivated woman would like to broaden her clientele, publicizing her restaurant to attract people from other towns in the region. She has learned to dream for more on the foundation of skills, education and loans from Friendship Bridge.

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Amanda Schweikert is a field blogger providing KIVA reports for Friendship Bridge. She also teaches part-time at the Lake Atitlan Multicultural Academy.

Empower women. Eliminate poverty.