Short Summary and Appeal
Belize Maya Villages Economic and Social Empowerment Program
1. The Belize Maya Villages Project focuses on building the capacity of three Indigenous Maya villages to manage and carry out their own economic and social development, both so they are better able to address critical issues related to livelihood, women's development, infrastructure and agriculture, and so they can escape the dependency trap of having to rely on outside charity and development assistance.
Maya people in southern Belize are the poorest people in the country, with an annual income averaging roughly 1/10 of the average national income of other Belizeans. There are many reasons for this, both internal to the Maya themselves and external to conditions within which they must live. Getting out of poverty for these communities entails building capacity to address this tangled web of circumstances.
2. This two-year Phase 1 Global Grant project will focus on three selected villages in the Toledo District, namely Santa Cruz, Santa Elena and Pueblo Viejo, which are located quite close to the Guatemala border in the southernmost part of Belize. Future project phases will expand to a much larger network of impoverished Maya villages in the Toledo District numbering near 40 villages. This phase is all about learning together, in partnership between the participating villages, Rotarian partners and collaborating NGOs, about how to put grassroots villagers in the driver’s seat of their own development while making substantial improvement to their sustainable development outcomes.
3. An extensive community needs assessment has been happening over the past two years involving in-depth community consultation and a small "bridging project" focused on women's economic empowerment. (This needs assessment report is available upon request.) Through these initiatives we have learned enough to agree on what should happen in a Global Grant.
4. Proposed Global Grant Project goals:
- to build the capacity of the targeted villages (grassroots people, leaders, village organizations) to initiate and carry out economic and social development initiatives that contribute to greater sustainable household and community prosperity and wellbeing
- to enhance the role and voices of women in community decision-making, in development action and in directly benefiting from developing outcomes. (Currently women are unorganized and left behind in many ways in terms of development progress.)
- to facilitate learning how to lead and manage development initiatives by actually doing development initiatives in the form of smaller and larger projects carried out by Maya people themselves as a learning laboratory in each village
- to enhance the capacity of village leaders and institutions to develop effective collaboration and partnerships with government and other potential outside helpers that are not dependency creating, but are supportive of community develop aims
The Ask
We are looking for "C" club partners or individual Rotarians to contribute to the base pot of money that can then be matched at the level of district, Canadian national and international Rotary levels. We already have $5,000 in our International Committee budget for this project, and we need to raise an additional $10,000 to reach a total of $15,000 that will match up in the Rotary system to a Global Grant of US $150,000.
- Our submission deadline is looming. We don't need committed money now – that comes much later in the next Rotary year, but we do need commitments by April 15 if possible.
- If you have contacts with someone in other Rotary clubs that you can connect us with and that might be able to help us, please let us know.
Invitation
We are on a learning journey about how to facilitate development through community engagement that focuses on building capacity and sustainable outcomes, which is where Rotary International is trying to get all of us to go.
If your Club would like to learn with us, we are open to having people from other clubs on our team as we work together, both in Canada and on the ground in Belize.
Contact Information
Michael Bopp, Chair, International Committee, Rotary Club of Cochrane,
email: anyone@fourworlds.ca
telephone 403-852-8283 (cell)
