Aldersgate Trip Aims to Empower Mayan Women in Guatemala

A travel agent isn’t likely to recommend a visit to the remote villages of the Highlands region in western Guatemala.  But a group of 69 parishioners from  say their service trip to the region was far more rewarding than any vacation found in a glossy travel magazine.

“The simplicity of life that our volunteers experienced on this trip really illuminated what’s important in life and what isn’t,” said the group’s leader, Jason Micheli, Aldersgate’s Associate Pastor. 

Micheli led the group on a service mission to help empower Mayan women living in Peccorral, a small, impoverished village near Quetzeltenango, a city in western Guatemala. According to Micheli, the Highlands region is one of the poorest parts of Guatemala, with many residents living in homes made of mud, corrugated tin or patches of plastic.

Due to the lingering impact of Guatemala’s four decade long civil war, and the effects of mass emigration to the U.S., most of the area’s residents are women, many of whom have no source of income.   

Over the last several years, the Aldersgate Church has been partnering with a non-profit organization called AMA, (“love” in Spanish) which is dedicated to strengthening the skills and abilities of women in the Highlands region of Guatemala. Micheli said that the focal point of that assistance has not been charity.

“The people who have the hardest time on these trips are those who just want to go down and give things away, like bags of old clothing and what not,” said Micheli, a native of Richmond, who has been a pastor at Aldersgate for six years.  “Our mission trips aren’t about charity, they’re about long term empowerment, not dependency.”

The first step towards empowerment comes in the form of wood stoves made of cinder block and firebrick. The components are made in Guatemala and the volunteers spend a good portion of their week on the ground, working together with local women to assemble them.

Over the last few years, the church has donated and assembled several hundred stoves and expects to resume the project on another trip right before Christmas later this year.

“Illness and death from upper respiratory infections is a huge concern in that part of the world because most of the cooking is done on open fires, indoors and the illnesses associated with breathing in smoke are really bad and the stoves remedy that immediate need,” Micheli said.

The stoves are fuel efficient and make cooking quick and easy compared to the laborious and time consuming chore of cooking over open fire.

“Being able to build the stove with the mother, feeling her excitement as the work progressed and being thanked sincerely through tear-filled eyes is more gratitude than I have ever known,” said volunteer Laina Schneider, who just returned from her fourth mission trip to Guatemala.

“What I felt when she hugged me and gave me a hand woven blouse from shaking hands is a love and appreciation that made all the work worthwhile.”

With the time the women save, they have time to participate in AMA circles, which are loosely based on the U.S. Methodist Church’s women circles, and focus on providing small groups of women educational training and entrepreneurial support.

“The circles aren’t about telling them what to do but rather nurturing them so they can recognize their own gifts and talents,” Micheli said.

One circle of women collaborated with fashion students at VCU to make skirts, handbags, jewelry, and women’s accessories that are sold at AlterNatives (3320 W. Carey St.) in Richmond.  

Other community circles started an organic natural dye co-op, a greenhouse, and a tea growing business.  At times, AMA staff and American volunteers have noticed that local men in the Highlands will try to push back and reassert control when they see the stoves being built and the circles flourishing.

“We’ll see little things, like having men try to insist where the stoves can go,” Micheli said. “They don’t really care about the stoves, but they’re just sort of trying to re-establish themselves as the bosses. Most women tend to just defer to them but AMA women don’t.”

The church and its parishioners say they have built a lasting relationship with the communities they’ve worked with and have even hosted several of the women they’ve helped here in Virginia. They hope to eventually bring AMA-trained women from Guatemala to Ft. Apache in Arizona to help train native women there on how to form empowerment circles.

The volunteers say the interaction with Americans serves as a much needed confidence booster for the women of the Highlands. And for many of the volunteers, the mission trips can be a life-changing experience.

“These women have taught me the true meaning of strength and have lent me perspective on what true hardship is,” Schneider said. “The Mayans embrace complete strangers and show us what it means to live simply and love abundantly.”