Vision:

Multiply sustainable Mayan villages that have a quality of life as high as the mountain tribes of Guatemala.

Since the end of the insurgency (36 year war) in 1996, the Pet in District of Northern Guatemala has been advancing. During the ten years since the war, a spirit of peace has endured. In this atmosphere refugees and displaced people are returning to re-populate the ancient Mayan areas.

Since there is now open access to the region, progress is apparent in the county centers. Governmental infrastructure is improving. Roads and communications systems are being upgraded. There is consensus among the population that the peace will endure and development can advance like in other regions of Guatemala.

Building upon the success observed at the county town centers, people of local and often primitive villages are beginning to see hope for themselves. Village leaders welcome empowering knowledge and demonstrations of how they can improve the lives of their families and communities.

Success has been shown to be the foundation for a continuing desire to do more to improve their impoverished lives. This must be done in a low risk manner to be acceptable to illiterate villagers.

The people are beginning to see how the subsistence level existence gets better through demonstrated higher food production, nutrition, health care and literacy. This is a small but important beginning.

Past experience with demonstrated success has become the springboard for envisioning a widening circle of leaders that are taking steps to help develop themselves and others.

The advancing village leaders are beginning to envision their people to see that they can continue to lift themselves from hopelessness to confidence in a more prosperous future.

Mission:

To empower village leaders to become capable of implementing Community Transformation basics in their villages; and to demonstrate to neighboring villages how they did it.

This project is supportive of the overall objective to partner with villages to motivate them to be transformed from abject poverty to faith in a better future.

Transforming the Pet in jungle region of Guatemala, one village at a time.

Calvary International, through its ability to form village partnerships, is successfully facilitating the process of progressive community transformation.

Community Transformation in concert with evangelism and church planting, synergize in a holistic way to lift families to a higher level of health, hope and happiness.
Meyers 2004

Target Population:

Census data reveal a provincial population of about 450,000 people. Governmental programs are successful at strengthening the infrastructure at the province and major town locations. The larger towns of several thousand people have an educated class of people and successful merchants.

In contrast, in the small, mostly Kekchi tribal villages, education is almost non-existent or basically dysfunctional. The same is true of health care and basic human services with barely passable roads or none at all.

Most of these villages are accessible only by 4-wheel drive vehicles, especially during the rainy season, six to eight months of the year depending on the soil type on which the roads or trails are built.

County centers have people of mixed tribal and Spanish ancestry. The primitive villages are populated only by tribal peoples of Mayan descent.

Project leaders have nearly ten years experience in engaging leaders of the very rural sector. A good reputation has been earned that makes it easy to be accepted by the villages that yet have no community development initiatives.

The fragility of life is so severe that these people cannot tolerate risky project adventures. That is why the demonstration (model) village approach is employed. They must see success to be motivated to risk change.

Since the villages are very isolated and the roads or trails so bad, access is available only with 4-wheel drive vehicles or by foot. Some seasons motorbikes can be used if the mud is not too bad.

Regularly scheduled contact and follow-up training is mandatory to reinforce positive change. Much listening time is required within the village setting to establish confidence.

To establish a demonstration site that can become a model village requires diligence in maintaining regular physical presence. The village leaders respond very well to regular on-site encouragement.

Note: Transportation to maintain access to these villages is always one of the greatest challenges to promoting development in rural villages. This transportation shortfall challenges missionary work, overseeing projects, denominational overseers and even governmental departments.

It is true for Calvary International, that maintaining access and to have a continuing positive influence is seriously jeopardized by the lack of suitable 4 WD vehicles.

Engaging a village begins with a contact. This is often through one person that has been helped with medical care. The Nutrition and Health Project for the Children of the Pet in (NSP) was so well received that it was taken to over 120 villages in five months time. There were up to 24,600 children enrolled in the program of protein nutritional supplementation. That program has given Calvary International credibility in most areas of the Pet.

Once a community is engaged, a meeting is held with the leaders. Skill is required in communicating with illiterate people at this stage to not create unreasonable expectations and to bring them along as the major participants. Women play a key role in the development process. However, the culture demands a cautious approach of honoring the male village elders initially. Once acceptance is gained then specialized training is possible for various segments of the village society. For example, strengthening the knowledge and capability of traditional birth attendants. (TBA)

Next, some leaders are taken to a demonstration site to see what others have done. Integrated community transformation is emphasized. A village project is begun with one thing that they want to do. Success in this opens the way for other parts of the effort. Early adopters are encouraged and reinforced to initiate future change.

Note: The use of bilingual (Spanish-Kekchi) national staff members is mandatory for the success of these projects. The presence of expatriate staff gives credibility to the effort and helps manage the resources and provide program stability.

At the primitive jungle village level, virtually no governmental infrastructure exists. However, the Christian denominations have made some progress impacting the hearts of some of the people. Calvary International has a history of coalition building among denominations, reinforcing existing work and avoiding duplicating anything that is already working and advancing.

Note: The description of the details of this program are portrayed in a way that begins with the basics and adds progressively more details in the next section or chart.

There is planned redundancy in this presentation. The various charts add information in greater detail. This method of charting the process leads to the final chart on measuring the improvement of various benchmark items. The benchmark list on Page 14 is the measurement of success  the ultimate goal.

This program description is also for training of staff on the systematic evaluation and drafting of outcome-based programs with a focus on results.

Goals:

  1. Gain access to leaders in primitive villages in 6 districts (counties.) Maintain current contacts in 120 villages.
  2. Initiate or continue small projects in 20 villages as a test to assess if the motivation of village leadership is present to facilitate more advanced development.
  3. Identify and select one village in each of the six counties (municipalities) to develop into a model village. (Achieve two selections per year 2005-2007.)
  4. Initiation of development of model villages in six different counties. Two model villages to be initiated in 2006.
  5. Multiplication of success by facilitating through modeling, training, partnerships and coalitions influencing 10 villages near each model village.
  6. Motivate the communities through participatory means to lift themselves to a higher plane of life and hope.

Note: These goals began to be developed in 2003. Expatriate staff has been trained and national staff are being developed and envisioned with the goals  a shared vision. A coalition of denominations was formed by consensus and is participating in the community transformation process. Included in the coalitions contribution is discipleship, church planting and development of leaders within the primitive villages. The Christian denominations are the major leadership and infrastructural focus for transforming the villages to become empowered to be all they can be.

Goal Summary:

Calvary International has begun and has had some success in achieving these goals. The rate of success is determined by the ability of the national staff to have regular presence in the villages. Through Calvary Internationals contacts and influence about 120 villages have become aware that the organization is available for advising and helping in community transformation projects and their processes. The program builds upon former successes.

The acceptance into villages is an important first step. There is now some momentum that is being reinforced each year by visits from the programs advisors, permanent national staff, missionary interns and short-term teams from North America.

Table 1. Goals and Objectives Chart

Note: The plan is to get two models initiated by December 2006, two more by December 2007 and finally by December 2008 have 6 model villages functional in 6 different districts (counties). This is a focus on establishing models for future multiplication through demonstration. This is Phase 1. Phase 2 is for each model village to model through demonstration to ten nearby villages and mentor the leaders to have the villages become like the models they have seen.

Table 2. Activities and Services Chart


Note: Villages A & F are the Phase 1 model or demonstration villages. The ten influencers are Located one per each of the ten satellite villages circling each model village A & F.

Note: The radio reaches to the primitive villages and is the primary means of outside communication to them. Interviews of community leaders cooperating in model villages will help inform the listeners of the program, its goals and activities and finally to focus on the successes. Note: The infrastructure is for a model village ultimately with about 10 satellite villages to be influenced in a given county.

Table 3. Activities for One Model Village Expanding to Six  The Process


Staff and Partnerships

The staff to operate the Pet in District Community Transformation program consists of both expatriate and national staff. A permanent community transformation staff typically consists of two expatriate members and ten national specialists and workers. Other agency expatriate and nationals manage the program operations offices and a demonstration and training center in the Northern Guatemala region.

Through partnering with other agencies, denominations and governmental entities the permanent staff is augmented markedly. The focus is for implementation through the national staff.

Primary partners include:
Ministry of Agriculture
Ministry of Health
Town governmental leaders
Security forces
Christian denominations
Private clinics and hospitals
Non-governmental Community Development Organizations (NGOs)
The missionary community
Visiting short-term teams (often with professionals such as medical, water development,
Dentistry, opthalmology physicians
Tropical health leadership development and integrated community transformation             advisors.

Note: The following advisors are available to the Director of the Pet in District Community Transformation program:

George H. Meyers, Ph.D.  Dr. Meyers has community development experience in supervising and evaluating significant development projects in Africa, Asia, Central Europe and Latin America extending over a period of thirty years.

Mark Dal Corso, MD, MPH. Dr. Dal Corso has conducted Tropical Health training in several Latin American countries. He is on the faculty of Tulane University Medical School and directs health programs in U.S. inner cities.

Jason Noble Mr. Noble has served in Guatemala and in the Pet in region for nine years specializing in training and planning and leading community development project teams. He is especially qualified in the process of developing consensus and contracts for village projects.

Synergism

This is essential to multiply our efforts in concert with other organizations. For this reason the model village project is a faithful partner in many aspects of ongoing development in the area.

An example is the training of interns from area high schools. The interns work alongside a national staff person for a month to learn practical skills in management, maintenance, bookkeeping, finance, community development and human resources.

Another example is conducting medical clinics in primitive villages in cooperation with the Ministry of Health district clinics and national doctors.

Our purpose is transformation of the whole person: spirit, soul and body while concurrently developing leaders that can replicate themselves in the lives of emerging village leaders out in the towns and primitive villages throughout the region and beyond.

Partnerships

We partner with various entities. For example, in 2003, we partnered with Orden de Malta to received several million dollars value of powdered milk. This was distributed to as many as 24,612 children each month, throughout the Pet, in a cooperative program with eight denominations and two Guatemalan non-profit development groups.

Through cooperation, a Pet-based association has emerged, ASEDI Asociacion Evangelico Desarollo Integral (Association of Evangelical Integrated Development) to promote, encourage and facilitate community development throughout the Pet District. This was formed by the leaders and influencers among the Christian denominations.

Leadership Development The training of Guatemalan leaders and specialists has been and continues to be the strong focus of this on-going program. The program is one empowering (capacitacion) or increasing their capacity to lead. This is done to influence, motivate, plan, organize and implement a program of separate projects that are designed to bring about positive change as shown by demonstrations that model success.

The program is an infrastructure like a scaffold that can later be removed. The leaders and followers go forward on their own, motivated by faith and success, being lifted to a higher standard of life and hope for the future. When leaders are developed to plan these things and achieve them, then it will be measured as successful. This is what on-the-job training is all about empowerment!

Table 4. Outcomes That Can Be Measured




Indicators

There are benchmark indicators that are used to measure progress. Some of these are shown in the Outcome and Result columns of the Outcome Table of this project description.

Primary Benchmarks

1. Per cent per year of improvement after the satellite villages are well engaged in the transformational processes. Typically a 5% improvement is very impressive and attainable throughout the satellite villages.

Table 5. Benchmarks and Measurable Improvement

The above chart is a partial list and will be changed according to specific villagers desires, priorities and contracts. The exact projects are selected only through dialog with village leaders and their influence over their people to buy into the process and to own the goals.

Comments on Long-term Progress

  • Conceivably the influence and capacity of the village leadership should grow in strength and motivation as the physical and spiritual formations advance.
  • The potential impact of this multiplication could impact over half of the villages in each of the modeling counties over a 15 year period.
  • Finally, after 15 years through expansion each model may positively influence 40 villages or up to 5,000 people in their county. However, this is not an ideal world. If only 20 villages of 250 people each were impacted by each of the six models A-F, then 5,000 people would be impacted per county as a springboard for future success.
  • Impact 5,000 people from each model A-F after 15 years of initiatives would yield:
      6 models X 5,000 people = 30,000 people impacted in six counties by December 2020; or half of the county population residing in outlying villages.
  • This type of model has the power within the transformational dynamic to continue to make progress long after the project is over. The investment in people goes on throughout eternity.

Note: If 30,000 people could be lifted from poverty to hope in this multiplying model in 15 years, we would all conclude that it was worth the cost and effort.

Built into this model is a clear mandate to foster self-sufficiency to prevent unhealthy dependency. The focus on leadership development is the driver to the continuing progress.

Dissemination: Creating a Learning Community

Periodic and final reports of this ongoing project have been and will continue to be shared through the following means:

  • Visits to model sites to personally view and experience the results.
  • Written periodic and year-end reports recording the results of the various projects within the program.
  • Financial and progress reports prepared and sent to meet the requirements of organizational, funding groups and partner agencies.
  • Progress reports are posted on the program information sites of the Website.
  • Media summaries to highlight achievement.
  • Distribute reports appropriately to governmental, non-governmental and partnership agencies. These reports will show:
    1. Plan Objectives
    2. Achievements
    3. Weaknesses and failures and their cause
    4. Lessons learned.
    5. Recommendations about implementing the program in other locations and even in other countries.
    6. A permanent file of electronic reports will be maintained to permit public access to the program results.

Summary

The program shown in this project description is a model village project. The concept is to form one model or demonstration village in each of six counties of the Pet District of Northern Guatemala.

The first three years of the program envisions having all six models in operation. Progressively about ten satellite villages nearby each model/demonstration village will be impacted through seeing, learning and doing what they have seen others do. The results expected include the benchmark items shown as improvements to the status. Studies are required to assign values to the benchmarks from which improvement is measured.

The program is integrated or holistic, encompassing spiritual, social and physical components.

A high level of participation is obtained in this program with a strong emphasis on developing leaders.

Even though in some cases the project works in an environment of very high illiteracy, integrated development can move ahead with some of the people concurrently inquiring literacy skills. Illiteracy will not hinder the outcomes.

There will be a progressive attainment of six model villages, then approximately ten satellite villages and further expansion of the learner-centered progress in the model villages. This extends to a multi-year effort with annual incremental improvement.

After 15 years, it is conceivable that 5,000 people in each of six counties will be impacted by this program. This would result in a definite improvement in quality of life for 30,000. The communities that are lifted will inspire others to try to improve their villages also.

Success will be measured against the benchmarks starting point and yield a higher quality of life through combined spiritual, social and physical values.