Conversation with Asociación Pop No’j, KIND Partner in Guatemala
To recognize the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in this blog we speak with Feliciana Ortiz and Blanca Miculax of the Pop No’j Association Women’s Program, one of KIND’s partners for our Reintegration and Gender and Migration programs. Read below to learn about their work to promote gender equality and prevent gender-based violence against girls, children, and adolescents in Guatemala.
Can you tell us a little about Pop No’j’s work?
Pop No’j, in the Mayan language K’iche ́ means “Weaving ideas, knowledge and wisdom.” Asociación Pop No’j is a Guatemalan organization that works with a focus from and with Indigenous Peoples, reaffirming the identity and revaluing the culture of the Mayan people. We accompany girls, boys, adolescents, women, men, for el Buen Vivir, a term used throughout the Americas that translates to Good Living and refers to an indigenous cosmovision of well-being and existing harmoniously with nature. We have four main programs: Women, Youth, Migration, and Defense of Mother Earth and Territory. The organization works mainly in the Department of Huehuetenango in northwestern Guatemala.
You have just finished the training process for teachers in the prevention of gender violence for the year 2024. Can you tell us about the process?
We began our work with teachers in 2018. Our goal is the prevention of gender-based violence—and specifically child sexual abuse—against children and adolescents. We also work to promote gender equality, from an approach based on the Mayan culture.
Our goal is to raise awareness among key actors about child sexual abuse and give them tools to prevent abuse and support child survivors. We carry out a series of trainings with teachers and community authorities where they learn about gender and rights issues, prevention of gender violence, rights in migration, and anti-patriarchal masculinities. We also held a meeting with all the participants on child protection in the contexts in which they work.
In addition to training teachers from six schools, we followed up with teachers from three additional schools who had completed the process in previous years. Follow-up is essential so that it is not an isolated, one-time training, but something that they can apply in their work and share with their colleagues.
We work with the Indigenous population, and the processes are developed from the local language, in this case the Maya Mam language, so that they can better understand the subject. We approach the issues from the Mayan Cosmovision, recognizing the culture and knowledge of the communities as a basis for building relationships of equality between men and women.
You work mainly with teachers and community authorities. How do the messages reach children?
In the workshops, teachers learn strategies for sharing what they have learned with their students. They learn how to talk to their students about issues such as gender equality and children’s rights and how to seek help. The teachers share these lessons to their students in the classroom, and we accompany them to observe and support. We see not only if they include the themes, but how they do it, if they do it in a playful way, with games, songs and visual materials.
The strategy of repetition—educating teachers who then educate their students—is important because we cannot reach the entire population with whom we want to work. Children live in very remote communities where information does not reach but if we train a teacher the information can reach many students. We also train women promoters who share the information with their families and communities.
Why have you decided to address the issue of child sexual abuse?
Huehuetenango is one of the departments with the most pregnancies at an early age. There is no reliable data on sexual abuse, but we do know that many pregnancies in girls are the result of abuse. According to the law in Guatemala, any sexual relationship with a girl under the age of 14 is considered rape. We have observed that it is important to address the issue of prevention because it is a taboo subject that is not talked about much in the communities where we work. We have to be careful how we approach it, especially with parents. There are also many adolescents who get together at an early age, although they do not yet have the capacity to assume the responsibilities of being a mother or father. That is why it is important to approach it from a young age.
It is important to educate teachers, because they have grown up in macho homes and many have been mistreated. They are looking for ways to change their perspectives.
What challenges have you faced in implementing the program?
We have several challenges. A lot of strategic and political coordination is needed to be able to carry out the teacher training program, to obtain permits at various levels. It is an ongoing process and takes a lot of time and resources.
Another challenge is the participation of parents. Men usually do not attend the activities. It’s thought of as something for women. Men say they don’t have time and send their wives, or, in the case of local authorities, they send the women on their team. We are continuing to work on getting more men to participate. When we make an invitation for one of our events, we communicate directly with people to try and get people including men to attend.
You have been implementing this teacher training process for several years. What are the most important changes you have observed?
We started working with teachers in 2018 and we have seen significant changes. There is a specific school that has been participating since the first year. Teachers apply what they learned in school and motivate their colleagues. It is also noticeable in the attitude of the teachers. During the training processes, they express that it has been interesting for them because these issues are not addressed in schools. We see this impact on them, they have been quite active and participatory. This motivates us to continue carrying out the processes.
How have you worked with KIND on this program?
We have annual meetings of organizations that have been quite interesting; we learn other strategies from other organizations in Guatemala and Honduras. Our contexts are different, but the meetings are helpful to come together and exchange ideas.
We also have the new Gender and Migration Curriculum Guide, which is quite comprehensive. All the organizations contributed activities so we can see and learn from the work of all the organizations. It will be implemented in the next year and is a useful instrument.
What are your plans for the future of the program?
We would like to cover several spaces, there is a lot of demand. We see a great need to educate not only teachers, mothers, fathers, to promote the Buen Vivir that we seek. We want to reach other municipalities where there are teachers and parents who have said they want to be part of the process. They are aware that sexual abuse exists in communities and also gender inequality, it is a large gap that needs to be worked on.
It is important not only to expand to new geographical areas but also to monitor and continue accompanying teachers. It is not a work of only one year, it is not just saying “yes, we attended a workshop.” We want them to change their attitudes and continue working in their schools and communities.
For this year, we focused our work a lot on the migration issue, addressing issues of prevention and protection of children in contexts of human mobility. Most girls and boys have a mother, father, and/or grandfather who has migrated, and one of their dreams is to migrate too. Hence the importance of continuing to address the issue of migration with a gender approach so that they are informed of the risks and also the rights we have.