The Highland Support Project (HSP) and our sister organization, the Association of Highland Women (AMA), have partnered for over two decades to foster healing in communities with historical trauma. One of the foundational programming areas has been organizing around increasing access to improved indoor cookstoves. An essential need to address for empowering women is the cost and labor associated with firewood. 

On November 28th, AMA and HSP facilitated and oversaw the delivery of 30 sanitation systems to 30 families in the community of Chuicutama, Guatemala.

HSP is in the process of forming a co-op holding company to facilitate micro-investment in Guatemalan and U.S. small businesses. In addition to direct investment, the co-op would supply personalized training, technology, and administrative support. Steps such as integrating e-commerce for these businesses would expand demand by opening access to markets in the U.S. and internationally.

In the months of September and October, we implemented our full focus on the Virtual Merchant program in Guatemala, Marchante Línea. Continuing through our circle empowerment method, a team consisting of a marketing director, business administration director, and graphic designer trained Guatemalan women in each field providing them with the knowledge and means to conduct their own product management through the creation of business cards, market photography, Webdesign, and business and contingency plans.

HSP has partnered with BJC in their National effort to save Oak Flat. Chí’chil Biłdagoteel loosely translated to “Oak Flat” in English is a part of the ancestral homelands of the Apache, Yavapai, Hopi, Zuni, and many other Nations in the Southwest. Qualified as a Traditional Cultural Property it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. It is a site of religious and cultural ceremonies, a burial ground, and a sacred space for tribal members to source medicinal plants, food, and water. The Apache People see the land as sacred and alive and have been caring for and communing with Chí’chil Biłdagoteel for centuries.

HSP is a network of social workers, scholars, faith-based community members, and Indigenous change-makers partnering to solve critical social and ecological problems. We utilize the methodologies of Participatory Action Research (PAR) " to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people" (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). PAR utilizes a spiral of steps, each composed of a circle of planning, action, and reflection about the results of an action.

With all of your efforts and partnership, we’ve done it again! Through recent funding and community engagements, HSP has been able to assist in the building of new stoves for six new families.