Party Games

The Spanish word for “party”, as in politics.. like a political party, is “partido”.

“Partido” also means “game”, as in sports or a match, like a game of soccer... or maybe a game of cards or Monopoly.

I don't know if anyone else catches the irony, but it struck me (not so) funny. And I think it captures quite well the Guatemala I've come to know.

I was actually first greeted at the airport not by my friends, as I’d expected... but by gun-armed soldiers, and circling army tanks and police cars with screaming sirens. I had arrived, unknowingly, into Guatemala on the day of the Change of the President, newly voted in in the recent elections, and the whole airport area was blocked off.  

  

I wasn't bothered (I smiled and asked to borrow a cell phone). It was quite a fitting introduction to the country actually, in retrospect, for this time around. It kinda summed up the rest of my trip –  stumbling quite inadvertently into the country’s political “present”. I'd become quite closely acquainted with its past in my last visit in 2009, but not much of its present reality, as I found out.  And I would find out over the course of 2 weeks that followed this first day, Guatemala today is HIGHLY politicized.

No one (except a select few friends) wants to talk politics, I know that. But in Guatemala – you’d have to be oblivious to not notice the political atmosphere. Almost EVERY house, it seemed, even way in the deep of the most remote villages, was splashed with one of the main political parties’ symbols, sometimes with a big red X across the symbol, which I first thought was graffiti until I noticed “Vota Asi” scrawled on it too, meaning “Vote this way”. (this picture is from the town... I didn't think to get a picture of the ones in the villages til I'd already left)

Everywhere, city and countryside... Guatemala does rather resemble like a Monopoly board, after everyone's got their pieces all over each property. There is hardly a house....

 

 

.. or roadside..

..or TREE.....

.. or even ROCK..

... that stands unclaimed.

Guatemala is working towards democracy.... but at present, it is more a game of partisan politics – democracy boiled down to electoral campaigns, with a lot of empty promises, corruption, propaganda and personal/selective rewards for allegiance... 

And in effect, almost nothing of real substance, at least for the rural Mayan populations.

On the drive out from the community of San Francisco that day, as I sat flustered and fuming in the truck, I saw a big billboard a smiley political candidate with the slogan “Human Rights for All”.

 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I did actually yell that out loud. In a car-ride appropriate volume; I had that much constructive self-restraint.

It’s not hopeless... but there is a long way to go before that rings true.

San Francisco is pretty special... but by no means unique. Poverty is closely tied to land in Guatemala – it always is, when the land is livelihood. But land ownership in Guatemala is HIDEOUSLY skewed – one of the most inequitable in Latin America, and in the world. Roughly 2% of the population owns 70% of the land. And that means, while wealthy land-owners sit pretty on profits from exploitative labour and international exports (coffee, cacao, sugar) from their large-scale plantations... communities like San Francisco are left scraping an existence of making cropland out of a mountainside never meant to produce food.

Reshuffling the deck would seem to be SUCH an obvious solution - but if only it were so easy. Land has been at the very heart of violent conflict in Guatemala since conquest and colonization, and all the way through recent history. As a case-in-point, in the 1960's, a socialist President seized land from the wealthy owners and re-distributed it to peasants... the brief "success" ended in a coup, a series of repressive dictatorships... and in/through/alongside/birthed within all that politics, a 36-year campaign of terror and genocide against the Mayans that would leave 40,000 to 50,000 people "disappeared" and 200,000 people brutally slaughtered in its wake. I had met a survivor of torture and heard his personal story when I was in Guatemala in 2009. Uggh. History is so ugly... and still. so. present. A Peace Accord that “officially ended" the war was signed in 1996, but the reigning legacy of disproportionate power, land, oppression, injustice, and poverty remains.

But that's not the end of the story.

At the heart of it, I believe that Jesus is already at work to bring about the redemption of poverty. His Kingdom Come will be one of justice, peace, and redemption of ALL that is broken and ugly. That's the Good News - to which we are called to respond. And that is what what makes my work a hope-filled, worthwhile joy.

To that end... 

.. this is Luisa. She’s one of the staff of HOPE’s local partner in Guatemala. I instantly loved her, with awe-filled admiration. She is the legal expert on indigenous issues, land rights/conflicts, Guatemalan law, human rights in application, and all things political. I talked to her for all that 2 days (and a debilitating emotional roller-coaster (and consequent stretches of speechless silence)) would allow... all the issues that Guatemala faced, things that Guatemala needs. She was insightful, passionate, humble, down-to-earth... and brilliant.

I SOO wanted to stay longer and shadow her work, just for a week or two!, and learn from her how she goes about working with communities around these issues. I would have LOVED to soak in everything she knows and does. But I realized also... as much as I care, as much as I love these communities, as much as I sort-of-kind-of know about Guatemala’s history and could learn about its present reality, and even have a piece of paper to my name that says I'm supposed know to something about peace education... I will never be as effective as Luisa to work with these communities. I can put on a corte (traditional dress) and if I reeeally put my mind and time to it, could probably learn the local Mayan language of this region to a functional fluency. But I will never be Mayan, and will never understand - or connect - as she can.

Me (to Luisa): You know what Guatemala needs? It needs more people like you.

It really does. Passionate people with a vision for justice and a love for their own people. And have the training, expertise, and commitment to make it happen. Our partner organization alone could use at least 2 or 3 more staff like Luisa to work with the communities, just in the province of Quiche.

What is Luisa doing? More than I can comprehend, much less explain, she is working with communities to map out the specific complex disputes over their land, with a myriad of historical, political, multi-generational contributing factors, and from there, addressing the issues and parties involved. The law is not generally favourable by any means towards the Mayan communities. But there are things that need to and can be done. In San Francisco’s case, this looks like helping each family to get legal land rights over the land they are now living on. Proper documentation that will establish each family’s legally-binding rights over their land, as protection against the land-owners throwing them off the land again. It will protect the investments they are making to turn a piece of useless, infertile land into a livable and productive (and therefore more valuable) home. It plays every bit into the goal of long-term food security for San Francisco. It is critical to sustaining change.

There is more they are doing - educational programming (for all communities, like Chinanton too, where we have the water project) around citizenship – even in learning about health and sanitation, agriculture and whatever other practical needs, they learn about their civic rights and obligations... to the ends of informed communities, knowing their rights as citizens, understanding civic participation, and making demands of their local government. In Guatemala's context, that civic participation and engaging in politics IS absolutely part of meeting basic needs, and beyond. Development - the better-and-better, good-upon-good kind - will not happen without it. And as a "peace educator" at heart that had spent much of two years specifically studying/researching community-based, transformational education in developing country postwar contexts, I scoured every page of their 3-inch binder of their three-year education/training program... for my own interest -- it was good. Much more attune to the present reality than a literacy-and-peace program I had worked on a few years ago in another town. Figures! What do I know?? Not that I had any doubt, but I'm so glad there are people in Guatemala who know what they're doing!

I know (almost) nobody likes hearing about politics. So why am I telling you this? A UPEACE friend posed a good question. What’s a tougher battle? (1) Raising money for an effort to convert a piece of land that's not meant to be fertile into a cropland, or (2) Entering into a diplomatic dialogue with the land owners to negotiate some kind of peace?  

Neither one nor the other, I think. I know I’M not personally going to be working on (2) - [diplomatic dialogue] - anytime in the near foreseeable future. But my work on (1) - [raising money that can support more of HOPE's work in Guatemala] - will make an important, immediate, tangible difference in San Francisco and communities just like it... and in some piecemeal sense, hopefully start contributing to (2).

Land, politics, and, now, politics as party games are at the very heart of Guatemala’s poverty.

It's a twisted, ugly, entangled complexity that's promised to be a tough battle to fight. But it's also a battle worth fighting (with constructive non-violence).

We can help to start re-shuffle the deck. 

Malice

I think for one year in the third grade I was the second-to-smallest in the class for class pictures. It was a good year – never to be repeated. You might’ve noticed in a couple pics before that I am not so small in Guatemala. In this community in particular, I stand a full head taller than almost all the women, and have a couple inches on some of the men. They asked me to join them for a picture and waved me in front. I squatted down so I wouldn’t block them all... it was not a good feeling this time.

It didn’t take much research to find out that Guatemala has the third highest rate (54.5%) of stunting (stunted growth) in the world caused by chronic malnutrition. Among the indigenous populations, it's about 8 in 10.

Poverty has a lot of faces. You don’t have to look too hard for indicators in many of the rural communities in Guatemala. It’s quite visible. I am a walking giant measuring stick.

The situations around and underlying this poverty are complicated –historical, legal, political, which I’ll maybe share a bit more about later. And quite rather simple. People are mean. And believe that there is something worthwhile to gain from it.  Well..... maybe not that simple. But. Well. More later.

This is San Francisco. It is a beautiful, beautiful community. Why so beautiful? I don’t know. More than their colourful attire. More than their landscape. More than their strength and fortitude in the most dismal of circumstances. They were not necessarily overflowing with life and smiles and energy (though some of the kids certainly were)... nor should they have been. They were just beautiful. Because life is beautiful. Life is just beautiful. Every single one.

That morning, before we left the office, I had a walk-through of the community’s history (which, as I would learn and am now still learning, has everything to do with everything) since the earliest that eye-witness accounts could remember – since the 1940s. It was a whirlwind of names, land ownership changing hands, agreements (more like conflicts, actually), and actions that were hard to quite follow and piece together until I got there.

A lot happened over those decades. Way back historically as a backdrop, when the Spanish colonized Guatemala, they took over much of the indigenous land (hmmm.. sound familiar to us?). But by the 1940s at least, the Mayan community of about 80 families in this particular spot were working as servant farm laborers (slaves?) on the land, owned by, of course, a Spanish landlord (I didn’t realize that til on the way out that day... which then made much, much more sense of the “conflict”). The men and women worked day to night (NOT voluntarily, as the staff I previously mentioned do) – 4am til 10pm – planting beans, corn, sugar cane, taking care of livestock, carrying these goods 28 km to the town.... all this for the pay of $0. That’s one zero, with a bunch of zeros behind it. Put a decimal point where you may. They were given just a bit of the crops to eat, and sometimes sent to go work on other farms to earn a few pennies from their labour.

Along the way, the Mayan families tried unsuccessfully to fight for their rights. They also at some point had been able to negotiate some land transfer but that was never clear nor written and never came to pass. There was an armed civil war in the 1960's through to the 90's that basically was a government-sponsored (US-backed) genocide of the Mayan people.

A long, convoluted story cut short, after the settling-down of armed violence over this last decade or so, this community organized themselves once again and said they were no longer to keep working in such conditions of harsh slave labour, and were told, OK, fine, get off the land. And they were evicted. They were “given” a tiny parcel of land up in the mountain forests 3 km away to relocate to (how generous.).

So they did. And they are trying to rebuild their lives. Cutting down some trees and replanting corn (the food staple) to survive. 

The shorter, yellow shrubbery you see surrounding the house below the steeper mountainside is the corn.

Unfortunately, corn doesn’t grow well in the mountains.  The soil is hard and infertile. And there is no water, except during the rainy season which was exceptionally harsh this year. Their crops failed miserably. They were left with a dismal harvest of kernel-less corn. 

Harvest season is the final months of the calendar year. It is a long way until the next harvest.

Enter HOPE to support an emergency relief project. And enter me, into a meeting with the community. This is not a meeting for celebration. This was a meeting of unassuming plea. Our local staff had just made a delivery 4 days earlier, of emergency food supplies – some corn, rice, and beans for each family. Utmost gratitude was expressed – again, thank you HOPE and thank you Canada. [meager smile – heh... you’re welcome? No, more like, you deserve justice and dignity. Thank you for inviting us to be a part of sharing in your need in this small way - we are humbled (why am I even on a chair??).]

But there was so much more. The community needs investment into their land and agriculture. They need legal support. They need a water system – right now the closest water source is a spring on the other side of the mountain; water is a daily 4+ hour expedition. 

A woman at her home, talking about her trek over the mountain to fetch water

We (HOPE) haven’t committed to supporting such a water project for this community. A note.. HOPE International “Development” Agency does do emergency relief. But usually integrated within a model of long-term development.  I was glad to see that happening here, to some extent. The community does not need their food to arrive in a sack. They need to be able to provide for themselves, with security and dignity. Through our partners here, we will be (or are, by now) providing support and training to make those important investments into the land – clearing the land, agricultural techniques (diversifying crops, introducing fruit trees, using organic fertilizers and pesticides through an integrated farm system (that itself produces organic fertilizers), etc) to help the community make the absolute most of the little resources that they have.

At this point, that is the extent of our commitment. The local staff are still doing the technical assessments for a water system to see what will be feasible/most effective.  Later this year, they also hope to help the community to set up (infrastructure and training) a community grain bank – much like the banks we know, just with dried corn - so in the future, each family can deposit in seasons of excess, and be able to purchase in seasons of need at communal rates, rather than at the mercy of the market. They are doing something else very, very important as well, but I’ll write about that later.

And I am sitting there, seeing this great need, and knowing very well the straight-forward opportunities to invest in sustainable change that will help this uprooted community be able to make a home of their new land, meet their basic needs, and move forward. And knowing that we have not committed to more funding. And we do not commit to funding more projects without funds we have raised (or expect with considerable certainty to be able to raise). And so I'm speaking with this community, with compassion and understanding, and some encouragement... but with no promises. I just thought, how embarrassing. How embarrassing that in all of Canada, in this great land of flowing abundance and excess, I cannot promise that HOPE (or personally, I) can muster up even say $20,000. Or $10K. I don't know exactly how much they needed but miniscule amounts. Chump change in our 15 million iPads and 37 million iPhones bought just in the last weeks of 2011. (ok, I didn’t know that specifically then and there, I just looked it up). How embarrassing. And not that I have anything against Apple specifically (other than conflict minerals but that’s also not Apple-specific, and a different story!)...  and I am writing this very blog with a shiny laptop of my own. We have in abundance. 

  

Anyhow, if you followed my blog earlier, I was so, so angry when I left the community that day. Humanity is ugly. (Or, it can be).

I might’ve had a richer vocabulary in English. Say, mean. Malevolent. Malicious.

I had a fewer choice of words in Spanish. But to the same effect. “Why are the land-owners so INHUMANE?!!”

Because it’s not outside our humanity. That poverty and human suffering is a social phenomenon – as much caused by people as physical geography or natural resources – is no new news – not an anomaly. But it’s none more evident, I’ve seen, than here in Guatemala... and in this community.

And it is so, SO UNNECESSARY.

Side note, somewhat, but worth mentioning. As if kicking the families off the land wouldn’t be enough, the land-owners also forbade the community to ever step foot on the farmland anymore. They couldn’t even cross the farmland to get to their new home in the mountains. They had to go around. When they tried to bring whatever small possessions they had to their new home with vehicles (I would assume the rental of a motorbike, or maybe it was actually our partner organization who had offered to help), the land-owners also forbade the passing of any motor vehicle.

So they took their homes and school apart. Brick by brick. Each piece of tin roofing. Each piece of wood or bamboo or anything that had any value for re-constructing their homes. 

... and WALKED each brick, tin sheet, and wood, 3km, AROUND the farm, ON their backs, UP the mountain  - each man, woman, and child did their share. 

One of the community leaders and his family and sweetest little kids in their re-built home

Along our drives over the few days, I saw more than few women on the road carting GINORMOUS loads (of firewood, corn, water, or whatever) on their back, bound in a bundle sack of fabric, held up by a leather strap across their forehead. The bundles extended 3 feet off their backs and surely weighed their own body weight if not more, with NO exaggeration. The expression on these women’s faces will never leave me.

Don’t ever say that development is throwing money away to lazy people who should work their own way out of poverty. There is no American Dream.

My most angry moment? As we drove ("illegally”) back out of the community. And I saw the big, grassy field we passed on the way in, earlier unnoticed of any significance by me.

On the way out,

Me: Is that the farm??

Jorge (director of our local partner organization): A piece of it. The land spans [a huge enormous area that we continued to drive through for the next 5 or 10 minutes]

And it is just sitting there, fallow. Unused. No one is using it!!! The land-owners don’t even live on the land. They live in the town where our office is, in a big fat house that spans half a city block. I wanted to hop out of the truck and kick the wall when we drove by and Jorge pointed it out for me. And they don’t need the land – they have more vast agricultural acres in the south of the country by the coast.

There was land in abundance, excess, and waste.

And the community is l.i.t.e.r.a.l.l.y  S.T.A.R.V.I.N.G.  Suffering meanwhile to work at rock-hard soil. Working to corn grow out of a mountain. And just a stone’s throw away, some vast endless acres and acres of flat, fertile farmland sits unused. Because someone has claim on it and the socially bestowed power to subvert Others to misery.

Why such malice???

Why???!

I would hazard a guess that these land-owners derive little true pleasure from the situation. My question is, what are you going to do with all that land after this lifetime?

After my flabbergasted outbursts in the truck that day about the INJUSTICE of the situation of San Francisco,

Jorge (gently): That’s only one example, Rainbow.

Me: I know.

Oh, I know. And that’s what makes me love and hate Guatemala so much. And I emailed HOPE that night... “I will personally raise new funds for Guatemala. I don’t know how. But I will.”

I don’t know how but I will. I cannot walk away. The suffering in that community - and countless others just like it - is so, so UNNECESSARY. Apathy and inaction... aren't all so very far from deliberate malice. 

Poverty is unnecessary in this day and age. 

I will not walk away.

 

Who cares??? :P

I like writing my blogs. It kinda helps me sew my piecemeal life together when some people from my different "lives" (from different places and phases of life) read along and be a part of my lives that way. :) And maybe more intentionally, more recently, hoping that through little glimpses into the different places that I am a part of, to sew our piecemeal world a little closer together. 

But.... it’s a bit harder to blog from home than when I’m away. When I'm in Guatemala, I was ~exhausted~ at the end of a 14 hour day. But for the staff... that's just a normal day. Working to serve communities in desperate need doesn't have fences around 9-5. They get to the office and are knocking on my door (I was staying in a room on the compound) at about 7am, as I've just rolled out of bed/shower, still throwing on some clothes while brushing my teeth and combing through wet hair, and shaking off sleepies, journal untouched on my bedside from too-generous-of-use of my snooze button)... and their day continues joyfully and fervently at the office as we come back after a long day with the communities, tapping away at computers and paperwork  til at least 7 or so at night. Some of the staff said sometimes they leave at 5am to get to more distant communities, and stay a few days, before coming back. Whatever the case, the day ends when they have done everything possible to help as many people as they possibly can... and begins anew when they wake up the next morning. We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. -Winston Churchill. I like Guatemala and I really, really liked our staff in Guatemala. They make their life in their work, in every good sense. It's impossible not to be inspired and encouraged to such joyful devotion and do likewise. Hence the couple of late-night posts from Quiche, Guatemala. :)

Thennnn.... I get home. And partly because I’m awash in the hit-the-ground-running busy-ness of schedules and responsibilities back home... along with good things like friends, family, ministry, snow, running and.. well, not-so-good things like Facebook and general internet time-wasting. But the other part, because I find myself so easily distracted, I realize how absorbed everyone around me is in our abundantly busy worlds, and how, just.. naturally.... the hurts and needs of families and communities (and the joys – rather than the bother – of being a part of redeeming it) oceans and continents away become a bit just that – distant.

And all the more then, I realize, “who reads my blog anyways??!” 

But with privilege to be a part of a world bigger than the one I call "home" in Vancouver... comes calling and responsibility. And I will be faithful to that. :)   

Starting, but not ending, with sharing a few more stories on my blog. :)

Hasta pronto (til soon!) :)

Rainbow

 

Celebration!

Back to Project Visits. :) 

I can talk much faster than most people can read (with interest). I use that to my advantage. :) But blogs are different. :) I’d written about 5 different blog posts with half constructed thoughts that didn’t quite flow into nice packaged stories. So I might, for this one, kinda just let the story tell itself. And more a bit later. 

Celebration. :) That was the banner over my first day of visits. As you might have seen a bit from my blog that night, it was a happy visit. This community that had gifted me with a traditional dress owed me, Rainbow, personally, nothing. But it was a day of celebration – smiles, thanks, gratitude, joy and celebration of all of those shared – with this “visitor” from Canada who represented all that made what was once only an airy dream possible: they had just completed the construction of a gravity-fed capped-mountain-spring clean water supply project a month ago in December. 9km of pipe, built by their very own hands and labour of love, funded by HOPE International Development Agency... which in turn was funded through the compassion and generosity of people like ourselves.

It was beautiful, that land of Chinanton. 

It was also a friggin desert. That pushed 50 degrees Celsius in the hottest months of the year. 

 

In a dry and weary land where there is no water... 

... *~CELEBRATION~* indeed!!

Each of the 213 families in the community each has access to a supply of clean, unpolluted, non-waterborne disease-filled water, flowing fresh from a tap, right in their own homes.

Until one month ago, it wasn't this way.

Each and every morning, they (especially the women) woke up, every day, at 4:00 in the morning, for one sole purpose: to find water. They had, more or less, two options. They could walk down to the river. The river was about 25 minutes or so in our truck. 

That’d be a 2-3 hour walk, each way. But guaranteed. Or they could walk a shorter distance to various natural “posits” of water in the desert. I don’t know much about deserts, but apparently, there are small water source holes, that fill up with water in the night. However, the flow from these sources can be so little, especially in the dry season, that long queues form for the precious water... and women sometimes return home with empty containers after a 4 hour journey/wait.  

Little posits of water in the desert. Is that what an oasis is? I think my mind has been awash in advertising that makes me picture a sparkling pool under the shade of a palm tree with a decorative piña colada in hand.

A few of the women in the community shared with me, and with each other, what life was like just a short month ago.

“We suffered to get water”. I’ll bet.

“Without water, we can’t have hygiene. We can’t prepare food”. No.

“No one can live without a cup of water every day”. True that. 

“Now, we have water in our homes. For this we are so very thankful. Thank you to the brothers and sisters who have helped us. Thank you to HOPE. Thank you to Canada”. 

I am thankful too. I can’t comprehend, really. But I am still so, so thankful. And the thanks are ours to them as well. I spoke for me “for Canada”. But I hope, actually, that it would become true for more of us. Maybe one day all of “Canada” would speak it in unison. Their joy was my joy. And it is a joy and a privilege to have this invitation and opportunity to share life together in this way. Our lives are infinitely richer and more abundant for it. And "both" our worlds are that much more beautiful.
 

One little thing one of the women said struck a funny cord, though I didn’t know why at the time. “Nothing grows without water. People die in the desert for lack of food.” Even a city girl can grasp the farmer’s intuition of that. I’d nodded, a pit-wrenching understanding the harsh physical reality and a deep appreciation of the new, different reality ahead. Incomprehensible for me, really, what that reality is like, but also not exactly the first time I’d heard the connection between access to water and agriculture for food. What makes development “development” is that it gets the ball rolling. “Sustainable development” doesn’t just mean  “how do we make sure that things can stay in the new state or level goodness?” but rather “how does goodness keep adding onto itself, more and more, fuller and fuller, deeper and deeper, more and more beautiful?”

And that’s what makes water so precious – it flows into and waters so much of development. Agriculture and food security, maybe most intuitively, but also heath, sanitation, gender equality, education especially for girls, (non)migration, peace, human rights, income generation, and nearly every development issue a community faces. And in and through all of those – HOPE (capitalized for emphasis, not for the organization, though that works too :)). 

Anyhow. I diverge. 

The funny cord. “People die in the desert for lack of food”. I picture the desert as the backdrop for a journey. Like a 40 day journey into the desert. Or riding through the desert on a camel’s back. But it is temporary, it is in passing, it is where people move through. Caught with lack of food in the desert, in my mind, would paint a picture of someone running out of food rations because they were inadequately prepared for the journey.

It was such a beautiful, happy, celebratory day, I never stopped to ask, “Why do these people live in the desert??”

The answer would become starkly clear the next day.

And maybe hopefully more so in the next couple posts. 

For now, a few more pictures.

Some of the roads en route to the village of Chinanton

At one point, we shared a skinny road with a horse that couldn't find its way off to the side of the road - it galloped ahead of us for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

The community meeting. I asked if any kids wanted to share anything too, after the men and women all had finished. They all shyly declined. But they were cute. :)

More celebratory meet and greet with the members of the community

So many colours. :)

Less hours spent in search for water means more time for productive activities... like mat-weaving!

They gifted me with one too... unfortunately, I just couldn't get it home (my bags and hands were already more than full getting to the next town). 

My new favourite necklace. I had noticed that all the women were wearing yellow necklaces and told them that they were pretty. They soon found me one too. :)

Lunch with the staff & some of the community leaders

Jose, the in-house technical expert & designer, showing me the technical sketch of the water system

Me with the (incredibly awesome) Water Team staff - Miguel (Health educator), Virginia (Health educator), Jorge (Director), and Jose (Technical expert/designer)