Through workshops, meetings and counseling, and using the approaches of popular education, nonviolent communication and family constellations, we seek to develop the emotional skills and employability of single mothers and women with unplanned pregnancies. The goal is for them to build autonomous, self-led lives, positioning themselves as the subject of their rights, and setting themselves up for success to have an emotionally stable life free of violence. We also provide childcare during the workshops, in which we educate to prevent unplanned pregnancies, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution and human trafficking of the youth in our city.

Since 2011, AMEXTRA has been collaborating with families in nine parts of Aldama and Chalchihuitán, to strengthen participants’ capacities and provide tools to create transformational change. At this state of our work, between January and December 2021, we’re building better nutrition access for 75 families (350 people) in the Chiapas Highlands, by way of educating around nutrition (awareness, cooking classes with local and healthy ingredients, exchanging local knowledge and food fairs) and health (hygiene, purifying water, killing parasites, vitamins, iron and folic acid).

CAMADDS strengthens the alliance between the two collectives Mujeres y Maíz and Plan Bioma, by creating, building and consolidating gardening plots as multidisciplinary gathering spaces, in order to cultivate local food using agro-ecological practices. In urban spaces, we lead food production initiatives by training children, youth and parents. In rural spaces, we diversify food production with the families of the women who belong to the two collectives. In all, we’re building an urban-rural network of collective gardening spaces.

Community Learning is a space to coexist safely and peacefully in order to facilitate social reintegration for children, youth and families on the northeast outskirts of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. We’re in the fourth phase of the project, which is a collective journey made in collaboration with Amigos de San Cristóbal. Its objectives are providing access to basic alternative education, developing capacities, and social reintegration thanks to emocional accompaniment and peaceful coexistence. The project is in response to participant family needs that have arisen as a result of forced isolation that COVID-19 brought on.

UNECODES provides accompaniment to 15 families in Chancolom, San Juan Cancuc, around the installation, management and production of egg-laying hens using ethno-veterinary practices, for family consumption and egg and meat sales to improve and diversify food sources and the shared economy. Producing meat and eggs provides guaranteed access to needed proteins, vitamins and minerals for healthy family growth. We use a gender-based approach to ensure equality between men and women in traditional nuclear families. Each family receives bird vaccines, chicken wire, a kilo of nails, troughs and fountains to build chicken coops. Ethno-veterinary workshops will also be given around best chicken production practices. Follow-up visits and monitoring will be given throughout the duration of the project.

MUTRAM develops strategies to prevent gender violence in direct relationship with organized women actors in the Chiapas Highlands and border-region with Guatemala, with the end goal of building a region free of violence. This is achieved by means of training workshops and building conversation spaces in our region. We travel the area promoting actions that bring about more informed and trained women and men, and their children, to help end violence, which worsens with each passing day. Community advocacy initiatives are led by these alliances and local authorities.

CONIDER seeks to address the ill impacts caused by the lack of attention given to the health sector following the COVID emergency in five areas of Cancuc, supporting 1,505 people directly under an alliance system between five nonprofits that focus on killing parasites and providing access to vitamins. More specifically, the more vulnerable communities will be supported continuously and attention will be centered around the malnutrition of children under the age of 5, as well as nursing and pregnant women. Moreover, community plans will be developed around health and water access, through participatory processes.

SOLMUNDI seeks to continue the Training and Workshop Agro-ecological Center based on local knowledge and wisdom, within the communities of El Corralito in Tenejapa and Jamubil in Chenalhó. This stage of the project focuses on participatory knowledge sharing and training around agro-ecological practices of family food production, optimizing horticulture, aviary, coffee and compost production. Within Naranjatik, Chenalhó and El Pozo, San Juan Cancuc, quarterly follow-up will be given to strengthen bee and byproduct commercialization.