Photo © Irra Lipke Studios www.irralipkestudios.com for Agros International
Indigenous Guatemalans have some of the highest rates of illiteracy, infant mortality, and malnutrition in Central America. Life expectancy is short and their crime rates are high. Rural Guatemalan farmers, who are mainly Mayan, were given the least fertile land following a 36 year long civil war. Life expectancy has dropped to 63 years of age for men, and 69 years of age for women. The majority of their children will not have the chance to make it that long due to malnutrition; children in Guatemala die within their first year of life.
I am traveling to the remote Guatemalan villages in the Ixil Triangle and Jaibalito/Chichicastenango regions from July 23- August 3, 2010 with a team of citizen journalists and Salaam Garage, a humanitarian media organization. I will create stories that will demonstrate how much work the partnering NGO- Agros International has been achieving. My work will show how much Agros is empowering and improving the lives of rural Guatemalan families.
My documentary project will tell the stories of hard working families in rural Guatemala. The stories I document will help Agros International continue to improve the lives of disadvantaged farmers and families in Guatemala and throughout Central America. Agros International is providing me with the rare access to go into these rural communities to document the impressive work they have been doing within the impoverished communities and families in both Mexico and throughout Central America. Through Agros, and you, the generous donor, we can all have a positive impact on farmers and these rural communities by telling their story visually.
My passion for food and human rights has helped to drive my desire for documentary photography; it will also show how these sustainable agricultural practices, traditional cooking techniques and practices can positively impact communities and Mayan people across Central America.
Through photo essays, I will show how rural Mayans in Guatemala today are growing and learning to preserve ancient traditions while incorporating modern learning in their everday lives. Stories like Jacinto and his family.
" Agros International gave Jacinto access to a bread making workshop where he learned to build efficient and clean woodburning stoves. Now, the entire family works together to make fresh, hot bread daily and sell it in Trapichitos and neighboring Agros community, Xeucalvitz. They have put a sign on the road in between the two communities which advertises the bread. With this new business, Jacinto and his family are much better off."
Agros International is working to cause positive and lasting change for these underserved communities. As a people that are continually fighting to survive, they have been pushed to hunger’s tipping point. For indigenous peoples in Guatemala, to achieve land ownership is critical. Without it, they will continue to be excluded from government and essential decision-making.
My documentary joins the mission of Agros. We are “committed to breaking the cycle of poverty for rural families in Central American and Mexico by enabling land ownership and economic stability.” Agros has found that “the root causes of poverty extend across communities and are passed down generation to generation- because Agros is focused on long term results, the “long term sustainability of a whole community serves to break the cycle of poverty in all its forms.”
Land ownership is the key to better lives for Mayans and other rural Guatemalans. In addition to their holistic long-term approach to break the cycle of poverty, Agros extends loans to purchase farmland and partners with farmers in applying sustainable agricultural practices, all in the goal of enabling these families to create, develop, and eventually own their own sustainable village.
Through this project, our sense of the world, community, and relationship to our food will broaden.
I am now offering gifts and prizes for donations- and there are periodic surveys also available to be taken. What better time to contribute to Guatemala than now?
Fill out the survey and browse my current offers if you are interested in more!
$25 donation gets a free set of 5 custom printed postcards
$50 donation gets free 8x10 of your choosing from Guatemala or other collections
$350 gets free portrait
$500 gets free family portrait or boudouir session including prints
