MADRE Statements

How a Chicken Can Send a Girl to School

Posted on: Friday, July 15, 2011

Keywords: Guatemala, Latin American and the Caribbean, Economic Justice, Indigenous Rights

(c) MADRE When MADRE staff recently traveled to Guatemala, we spent time with our sister organization MUIXIL, an Indigenous women’s group in the rural highlands. Since 2007, with your help, we have supported a women’s chicken farming project, helping to meet women’s need for sustainable income in deeply impoverished Indigenous communities. We’re happy to announce that the project is growing!

With the generous support of MADRE members, we were able to send a contribution to MUIXIL, enabling them to purchase 48 baby chickens and the supplies to build new chicken coops. The chickens and coops will help create a new future for women and their families in three different communities. With the eggs, women can give their children protein-rich meals, selling extra eggs to raise money.

(c) MADRE For one woman named Rosa, who never went to school because of turmoil caused by the decades-long civil war, the chickens have meant that she is able to break the cycle and send her own young daughter to school. "Because of the war I never went to school for even one day. My biggest hope now is that my daughter will finish school. I have the chickens from MADRE now and that means better food for my daughter. We get a little money from the eggs each week. I put it in my secret place and I use it to buy pencils and books for her. I know her life will be better."