2012 Trip Scheduled
May 26- June 2, 2012
Flyer click here
Application click here
For questions please contact Janett Forte
email: jforte@vcu.edu or call 804-827-1200
July 2- July 9, 2011
Hosted by the VCU Institute for Women's Health in partnership with the Highland Support Project, Partners in Service Program, and the Association of Highland Women (AMA)
The work of a midwife in Guatemala is an ancient art form, using philosophies and techniques that are virtually unknown in Western medicine. Her practices are founded on the belief that we must achieve and maintain a balance between humans and the environment. In the highlands of Guatemala, midwives are often the only health care providers for many miles in isolated, rural communities. They are eager for more knowledge of medicine and the opportunity to develop their abilities in order to improve the quality of care given to their patients. The program allowed the team to share time in rural villages with the midwives, learning about their practices and sharing experiences around health, pregnancy, birth and mothering.
A multi-disciplinary team of 12 women from the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, students from the VCU School of Nursing, and School of Social Work, along with registered nurses, a midwife assistant, a nurse practitioner, an herbalist, and a massage therapist participated. The group was from Richmond, Virginia, the Boston, Massachusetts area, and California and worked together in the Western Highlands of Guatemala in the villages of Chuicutama, Pacutama and Chuiquisies outside Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
The weeklong exchange included time with Mayan midwives, health promoters and community leaders. Together we worked with the local Guatemalan group Association of Highland Women (AMA) to follow up on the ongoing health training the midwives had been receiving over the past year. AMA has been working on projects to empower and support traditional midwives by providing comprehensive and culturally appropriate training, essential equipment, and practical support. The team wanted to share our knowledge and skills and offer support in any area of health care, early detection of complications, treatment of illness, or emergency first aid the midwives might desire more knowledge and skills in.
The group thought carefully about how to approach our time together and how to provide a safe space for traditional midwives to share their experiences and concerns. The team felt clearly we wanted the sharing to be equitable, knowing we would learn as much from them as we might share from our own experiences. Initially the midwives’ voices were soft and their words were spoken with hesitation. Translation from K'iche' to Spanish at first seemed slow, but a rhythm developed and as the sharing continued over several days, speech became more rapid, and on occasion several midwives interjected comments at once, excited about the topic. At times the laughter and chatter was all consuming all both sides, with a sense we had found solidarity with stories and shared experiences as women. The discussions evolved across the continuum of maternal and child health including pregnancy, birth, labor and post-natal care and afforded opportunities for hands on skill building and illustrations of practices including the use of massage, temascals and herbs.
The trip itinerary had a wonderful balance of cultural, community and service related activities. Time in the villages included participation in a traditional Maya ceremony, meetings with a Mayan bone-setter, midwives and health promoters and women’s circles members, all with emphasis on their sharing information on traditional Mayan medicine and practices. We had lectures on Mayan Health and Cosmo-vision and learned about the Mayan calendar and our ‘Nawal’ which based on your birth date and year is your helper and guide in life. The group had a presentation from our host organization AMA on their women’s circle model and their approach to working with communities. We toured village greenhouses, helped plant an herb garden and participated in cooking classes with village women. We also had a chance to experience some of Guatemala’s many cultural sights and activities including a boat ride across Lake Atitian to a small village San Juan La Laguna to visit a women's weaving and natural dye cooperative: FEDEPMA, The Federation of Mayan Women Textiles who shared how they dye cotton with natural materials such as herbs and bark. We bathed in a sacred Temescal’s, learned to make tortillas, and shopped at artesian markets in Panajachel and Antigua.
www.partnersinservice.org or www.highlandsupportproject.org
Janett Forte, with the VCU Institute for Women’s Health served as a team leader.
Contact information: Phone 804-827-1200 e-mail: jforte@vcu.edu
Trip Details: The standard 8 day trip with all expenses paid includes all in country transportation, food, lodging and translators. The full cost is $950, plus airfare.
Service - Exchange Program -
Hosted by the Highland Support Project, Partners in Service Program, and the VCU Institute for Women's Health
A team of 13 people included a faculty member, students and alumni from Virginia Commonwealth University was lead by Janett Forte, M.S.W., director, VCU Institute for Women's Health and assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry participated in a week long service -exchange program to learn about Mayan health and midwifery practice in the Highlands of Guatemala. The team partnered with the Richmond based Highland Support Project
The Highland Support Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Richmond, Virginia. HSP serves the Mayan communities of Guatemala through transformational development projects and offers service-learning trips to North Americans in our ongoing mission to foster meaningful exchange and understanding across the Americas.
In the highlands of Guatemala, midwives are often the only health care providers for many miles in isolated, rural communities. They are eager for more knowledge of medicine and the opportunity to develop their abilities in order to improve the quality of care given to their patients.
The team was hosted locally in Quetzaltenango, by women from the Asociación de Mujeres del Altiplano (AMA) at the Wach Lal House.
A.M.A. is a non-profit organization that works to strengthen the skills and abilities of Guatemalan women from the highlands of Quetzaltenango. They work to create opportunities that will transform their lives as they head down the road to independence. AMA was incorporated in 2005 by five Guatemalan women with decades of organizing experience. For more information visit: http://www.amaguate.org/
The itinerary included cultural, educational, service and exchange aspects. We worked for 4 days in the rural Mayan villages of Chuicutama and Pacutama. The trip included
- Participating in midwifery and health promoter trainings – with a focus on prenatal care, fetal position, traditional birth, post-partum care. The health promoters learned about vital signs,
- Participating in a local health committee meeting to explore development of VCU collaboration to improve health access and services in the 5-7 area villages.
- Communal lunches with our Mayan women hosts
- Lessons from midwives on medicinal herbs
- Sweat baths in a ‘Temascal’ sacred Mayan site
- Lectures from a ‘bone-setter’, similar to an orthopedic surgeon
- Lecture from a Mayan spiritual guide and participation in a sacred Mayan ceremony
- A Mayan Cosmo-vision lecture on history and culture with Daniel Matul: with a focus on Mayan conception of health and current Mayan health conditions and practices with trends and issues in Mayan Women’s Health Care
- Presentation on the Health situation in Guatemala from Yolanda Castile a government public health nurse and district manager.
- Meeting with ACAM – Maternity Center in Concepcion Chiquirichapa, Guatemala
- Stop at Iximché (“E-ch-em-shay”) the Pre-Colombian capitol of the Kakchiquel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524.
Two of the VCU School of Social Work students utilized the trip to receive independent study credit as they studied issues related to women’s health, maternal mortality, family life and social justice in rural Guatemala under the faculty guidance of Karen Smith Rotabi, PhD, Assistant Professor Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work.
The group also used an article by Rotabi: “Ethical Guidelines for Study Abroad’ to critically analyze the teams approach to the service/exchange experience. Using the pillars for ethical study model the group considered issues of power and privilege, community capacity, competence, integrity, dependency, and self-determination to facilitate a safe yet challenging learning environment with a social justice and human rights framework.
Guatemala Mayan Midwives Program starting June 26- through July 3
http://guatemalamidwives.blogspot.com/
Guatemala News & Human Rights Updates click here
VCU REPRESENTATIVES BRIEF WHITE HOUSE ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN GUATEMALA
Click here for more information
Association of Highland Women (AMA) Asociación de Mujeres del Altiplano
A.M.A. is a non-profit organization that works to strengthen the skills and abilities of Guatemalan women from the highlands of Quetzaltenango. They help them create opportunities that will transform their lives as they head down the road to independence. A.M.A supports Guatemalan women of limited resources, regardless of education level, income, language, ethnicity, religion and civil status. The mission is to empower women through cooperative action.
click here for website
A new website provides information and updates on Violence Against Women in Guatemala visit:
STOPFEMICIDE.COM
To learn more about the socio-political context of violence against women in Guatemala visit, Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) website at:
http://www.ghrc-usa.org/Programs/ForWomensRighttoLive.htm
Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) sponsored
" For Women's Right to Live Delegation"
This seven day trip provided an immersion experience to understand the causes of violence against women in Guatemala. The group meet Guatemalan women, survivors of violence, families of victims of violence, women community leaders, directors of women’s rights organizations, women trade unionists, and interacted with rural Mayan women’s groups.
Post trip information is available at the GHRC website
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Guatemala Human Rights Delegation Report – “Women’s Right to Live Campaign”
 Janett Forte, IWH Program Director, and a team of 14 other people including VCU School of Social Work faculty member Dr Karen Rotabi, VCU MSW Alumnae Abby Dini, current BSW student Priscilla Witwer and 3 staff from the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance ncluding Beth Leftwich, Debbie Haynes, and Carmen Williams participated in the August ’09 delegation which explored violence against women, including femicide.
The work included meetings with 15 groups and individuals, receiving testimonies of violence survivors and human rights advocates. Currently, Guatemala is one of the worst examples in the world of this crime. The violent acts frequently include torture and ritualistic abuses with women’s bodies being left in public locations as a message to the community and striking fear, thereby making it a form of terrorism. Since 2000, over 5500 Guatemalan women have been brutally murdered. These gender-based crimes have been characterized as "femicide" because they target females. 98% of the crimes go unpunished.
The team of 7 from Richmond is continuing to meet and strategize ways to raise awareness and increase support for women’s human rights in Guatemala.
View Janett Forte's Delegation Summary Powerpoint Presentation
Virginia Commonwealth University social work professor Karen Rotabi has put together an online photo-journal about the delegation.
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Follow the Guatemala Human Rights Commission Delegation - "Women's Right to Live" via my blog at http://vcu-wh-guatemala.blogspot.com
At the top of the page you will see a button FOLLOW BLOG - click on that and sign up as a follower - or just view the blog via the address I provided.
I posted reflections and experiences from August 1 through August 9, 2009
 Janett Forte, IWH Program Director, and a team of twelve other people including VCU School of Social Work, University of Central Florida and University of Nevada Las Vegas social work faculty, students and activists from across the United States will participate in this Guatemala Human Rights Delegation (GHRD).
Please join us as we travel to Guatemala in August to learn firsthand how violence against women (VAW) is impacting the women and families of Guatemala. Violence against women in Guatemala that has claimed the lives of over 4,000 young women since 2000. While about a third of the murders are related to domestic violence, investigations suggest a less personal pattern in the other cases. Such brutality creates a political instability and a climate of terror, the apparent objective of the brutal murders is to send a message of terror and intimidation. This intimidation, may lead women to retreat from participation in public life, gained with so much effort, and limit them selves again to the private world, abandoning their indispensable role in national development.
Our delegation
The delegation focuses on women’s rights and the ongoing efforts to end discrimination and violence against women in Guatemala. We will meet with individuals and community groups that have courageously spoken out against gender-based violence, as well as explore the broader context in which this violence takes place. Through meetings in the major cities and travel to rural communities, we will see how Guatemala’s history and current human rights situation affect these efforts to secure women’s rights.
Our commitment to take action:
As important as our presence in Guatemala will be, we are also making a commitment to share what we have learned with the people we know back home. The blog is a way for me to share our experiences, raise awareness, and increase support for human rights in Guatemala and the work of GHRC after our return.
Violence Against Women as a Women's Health Issue:
Gender-based violence, or violence against women (VAW), is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Worldwide it has been estimated that is as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer, and a greater cause of ill-health than traffic accidents and malaria combined, according to the World Health Organization.
For more information visit, Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) website at:
http://www.ghrc-usa.org/Programs/ForWomensRighttoLive.htm |
