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Field to Film: A Youth Storytellers Film Festival

Over the last several months we’ve shared stories of rural communities and local food systems throughout Central America and West Africa, as documented by the youths in those communities as part of our Youth Storytellers Program.

A joint effort between Groundswell International, our partner organizations, and these ambitious young people, the Youth Storytellers Program has enabled local change-makers to use communication as a catalyst to drive social change and shape the local and global narrative surrounding agroecology, climate issues, and how to ‘feed the world’, as they have written, filmed, and edited these videos and served as an inspiration to other young members of their communities.

Voices From the Field

So far, we’ve shared stories out of Honduras and Burkina Faso, documenting smallholder farmers, women entrepreneurs, and young innovators, including the strategies and techniques critical to their success and the universal elements they share with other farmers around the world. Through these stories, the Youth Storytellers have highlighted the improved resilience achieved by farming with nature instead of against it. They are shining a light on communities regenerating their local economies, fighting food insecurity, and establishing financial independence. 

We’ve been inspired as we’ve shared these first few stories with you, but there are still many more stories to share! This is why we’re now beyond excited to be able to enable even more Youth Storytellers from around the globe to make their voices heard and bring you new examples of empowerment, transformation, and triumph as we host our first-ever virtual film festival: Field to Film. 

Field to Film: A Youth Storytellers Film Festival 

On December 2, 2022, Youth Storytellers from Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nepal showcased their work capturing community-led and ecological farming solutions, spreading them locally, and changing the narrative globally on how to tackle hunger, poverty, and climate change.

In case you missed it, you can watch the full film festival recording here:

Youth Storytellers in Honduras: Part 3

Intro / Part 1 / Part 2

Groundswell International collaborated with two of our partner organizations, Vecinos Honduras and Association Nourrir Sans Détruire, to elevate the voices of local youths in South America and Western Africa, allowing them to shape the next generation’s global narrative. Our last batch of videos out of Honduras come to us from three more young storytellers from communities throughout the country. Through these videos, these youths demonstrate the triumphs, empowerment, and lessons learned that they witness daily in their communities.

Women’s Local Market

In Concepción de Maria, Groundswell International and Vecinos Honduras have aimed our efforts on the ground at empowering locals, particularly women, to strengthen their communities both in the economy and the health of their neighbors. Through education in ecological farming and business practices, women entrepreneurs have gained the ability to sustainably farm natural, healthy foods like fruits and veggies and then hold markets to sell those foods, amongst other products, to their neighbors. This has empowered the women of Concepción de Maria to bolster their local economy while improving the health of their families and community.

Watch the video below or on YouTube:

Family Farmers

In communities throughout Honduras, family farmers are solving grain shortage issues by buying local grain and working with Vecinos Honduras to source space and fertilizers and work in collaboration with other farmers in the farmer-to-farmer programs. Growing food locally provides better access to healthy food for these communities and allows locals to provide for their own families without having to rely on chemically or genetically modified commercial offerings.

Watch the video below or on YouTube:

AE Local Resources

Farmers in communities across Azabache, Honduras, are rethinking organic farming and their relationship with the environment thanks to their partnership with Vecinos Honduras. Training from Vecinos Honduras has empowered local producers to develop new ways to provide food to their families and neighbors that don’t contaminate natural resources, including the use of amino acids to strengthen their crops and using microorganisms found in their mountains. Says farmer Pedro Chavarria, through their partnership with Vecinos Honduras, local farmers have “realized that we were really in a part of the world where we had all the resources to work without the need of chemicals.” 

Watch the video below or on YouTube:

Youth Storytellers in Honduras: Part 2

Intro / Part 1

Groundswell International collaborated with two of our partner organizations, Vecinos Honduras and Association Nourrir Sans Détruire, to elevate the voices of young storytellers in South America and Western Africa, allowing them to shape the next generation’s global narrative. The newest round of videos in our Youth Storytellers series comes from some exceptional youths in Honduras.

Income Generation

The Los Cavales Número Uno community of Azabache continues to be empowered by Groundswell International and Vecinos Honduras’ support of local development. In this video, Youth Storyteller Yesica Lagos discusses both her and her neighbors’ experience with Vecinos Honduras’ program, with Yesica describing her involvement with Vecinos Honduras as “one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.” 

With training and support from Vecinos Honduras, Yesica’s community is seeing a regeneration of its local economy as locals find success in various business enterprises- including wood carving, motorcycle workshops, sheet metalworking, and even Yesica’s own snack business- enabling this community to generate their own income and gain independence from outside middlemen. As her community continues to build on its success, Yessica says, “They have left a legacy in our lives, in our communities.”

Hear more in Yesica’s own words by watching the video below or on YouTube:

Yaneth: Local Markets

Youth Storytellers are not only using their videos as a way to illustrate their community successes to the global community but as a call to action to their local communities to participate in their own empowerment and community building. In the area of Guarumas, El Tránsito, and Canadelaria, Vecinos Honduras supports community members in creating local markets that allow entrepreneurs- who have learned skills in their trades through training provided by Vecinos Honduras- to offer their products to the public, growing the local economy and reducing the need to travel to other areas for goods. 

Watch the video below or on YouTube:

Farmer Experimentation

“A producer with vocation is the one who works harmoniously with nature.” 

For decades, farmers in the El Corazon de Maria region of Honduras have felt the hard effects of climate change. Formerly a sawmill called La Sierra, El Corazon de Maria experienced much deforestation that has altered the local environment, creating lasting consequences for the local farmers, their community, and their culture.  

Training from Groundswell International and Vecinos Honduras has taught local farmers better practices for working with the land they live on and adapting the seeds of their ancestors to the current climate situation, allowing them to no longer have to rely on GMO seeds brought in by outside groups, and creating harmony between the farmers and the environment they live in. 

Watch the video below or on YouTube: 

Youth Storytellers In Honduras: Part 1

Intro

The first round of videos in our Youth Storytellers series come to us from some young change-makers in Honduras. Our Youth Storytellers have filmed and edited these videos to demonstrate the successes in their communities. 

Merlin Aguirre

In Honduras, we are working alongside our partners at Vecinos Honduras to foster enterprises at the local level in order to regenerate local livelihoods and build the economies of rural communities. Vecinos Honduras provides education for members of the community, particularly young people, to learn skills and trades that allow them to gain financial independence and bolster their local economy. Through these efforts, over 650 people, including over 70 young people, have been able to form savings and credit cooperatives, mobilizing over $510,800 in savings.

Youth Storyteller Merlin Aguirre is one such youth in the Los Cavales Numero Uno community of Azabache. The son of a single mother, Merlin joined the El Esfuerzo Local Saving and Credit Union youth group Alianza Juvenil at age 20, where he received training from Vecinos Honduras to make metal silos and quickly started expanding his tinsmithing skills. Now, at 26 years old, Merlin owns his own tinsmith shop, Hojalateria La Bendición, where he crafts and sells metal silos, bread recipients, metal tubs, chimneys, accessories for coffee grinding machines, signs, license plate frames for vehicles, and more. Merlin’s skills and entrepreneurship are helping to revitalize his local economy by allowing his neighbors to buy the items they need locally – to store grain to increase food security and gain independence from middlemen, process agricultural products, avoiding smoke contamination from cooking fires in homes, and using motorcycles for local transport.  Merlin is also teaching his craft to other youths to enable his community to build success together.

Watch the video below to see him demonstrate his craft:

Women’s Empowerment

A large focus of Groundswell International’s work is on empowering women in rural communities around the globe. Women in the Concepción de María region of Choluteca in Honduras have been empowered to find their voices and take their places as leaders in their communities thanks to practical training and education from our partners Vecinos Honduras. Community members explain that while women used to feel timid, the education they have received has instilled confidence in them to make their voices heard and has left women feeling that they are now on an equal level with the men in their communities.  

Similarly, community analysis and refection facilitated by Vecinos Honduras has helped everyone in the community to better understand and relate to each other. Many men now see more clearly the contributions that women have always made to their families and communities in so many ways, which has fostered deeper respect and collaboration in the community as men now contribute equally in their homes and families. 
Watch the video below to learn more about how the people in these communities are thriving:

Groundswell’s 2021 Annual Report: Highlights

Each year, we release our annual report to illustrate the impact our organization and our partner organizations have had on sparking change in rural communities around the world. In 2021, the world continued to be plagued by crises, but we witnessed and were inspired by the resiliency of people who have committed to improving the lives of their neighbors and communities.

A few highlights from the 2021 Annual Report

  • In Honduras, Groundswell is collaborating with Vecinos Honduras to promote and scale ground-up alternatives that can reverse decades of extractive agricultural practices; political and economic dysfunction; and extreme vulnerability to climate change, including persistent drought and devastating hurricanes. We are working with 52 communities and over 10,250 people to support agroecological farming on eroded mountainsides; to improve family nutrition and incomes; and to strengthen community-based organizations and cooperative enterprises to regenerate local livelihoods and rural economies, with women and young people playing leading roles. 
  • In Nepal, we are working with our partner, BBP-Pariwar, to form and strengthen women’s solidarity groups for mutual support and action-learning to improve their lives and communities. The women are adapting and spreading to other families agroecological techniques like worm composting and biological fertilizers and pesticides; diversifying farms by planting fodder and fruit tree seedlings; developing community seed banks; and improving household vegetable gardens, rainwater harvesting, and small livestock management.
  • In Senegal, together with our partner organization Agrecol Afrique, we are promoting and spreading strategies to address the collapse of soil fertility and livelihoods in the Sahel, and reverse the extreme vulnerability of rural communities. Working in the ecologically fragile, risk-prone Kaffrine region, we are supporting a local movement to spread farmer-managed natural regeneration of trees (FMNR), dry-season vegetable gardening, and other techniques to regenerate soil fertility and food production. Over 1,660 women have gained access to land, water, and training, and are regenerating degraded land for dry-season-vegetable gardening. 
  • In 2021, we piloted our Youth Storytellers program with our network partners ANSD in Burkina Faso and Vecinos Honduras in Latin America. We supported them to identify interested young people in program communities and facilitated them to retain basic communications training and equipment to produce brief videos on local success stories. These young people are using communications to drive positive social change, and gaining a sense of agency as they recognize, document, and strengthen the power of community-based organizations to spread real solutions. While Youth Storytellers are sharing their videos locally through social media and gatherings, we are finalizing over 15 videos to allow them to shape the narrative internationally in 2022. 

You can hear the voices and watch their stories here.

2021 annual report

To learn more about the work our partners are carrying out in their local communities, the support that Groundswell International provides, and to see a breakdown of our 2021 financials by the number, read our complete 2021 annual report.

Report From The Field: Honduras

By: Chandi Guntupalli

As Groundswell International’s newest staff member, I had the privilege of doing my first field visit to our partners in March 2022, along with our Executive Director and co-founder Steve Brescia. Steve and I traveled to Honduras at the end of March 2022 for five days to meet with our partner, Vecinos Honduras, to discuss our plans for the Central American Dry Corridor. 

honduras

The Central American Dry Corridor is one of the most vulnerable parts of the world, one that’s been highly affected by climate change. This region extends throughout El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, with Honduras and Guatemala experiencing extreme drought. Many people in the Central American Dry Corridor live in rural areas and live in poverty, forced to depend on grain crops for sustenance and survival. 

This was my first time in Honduras and my first time in Central America. I was excited to travel to a country I had never been to, and I was grateful to travel again internationally since COVID-19. Little did I know that this trip was going to be one of the most impactful experiences I’ve had in the past few years.

honduras

Since our purpose was to discuss our strategy to support Vecinos Honduras in its plan for the Central American Dry Corridor, we went straight to the region after we landed in Honduras. Staying in Nacaome, in the southern part of Honduras, allowed us to visit a regional office of Vecinos Honduras to learn how their services and programs differ based on the needs of the community. Over the next few days, we traveled to various municipalities in the region to meet with farmer community leaders and local organizations making a difference. This was absolutely my favorite part of the trip – to meet with the farmers and their families that we support through our work. They were incredibly gracious, allowing us into their homes and serving us lunch from the crops of their farms – this was literally a farm-to-table experience. Interacting with and learning from the farmers was a humbling experience to learn about the impact of our work and also realize how much further we need to go. 

honduras

At first, I felt out of place and out of my element in Honduras, not speaking the language and not having traveled to that region of the world. Through, sharing my experiences with the farmers and learning from their experiences, I felt a kinship in that as humans we really have the same goals – for our families to be safe, healthy, and happy. There is much to do in that region, in order to ensure each family is nourished, and I’m proud to be part of a community that is working towards that goal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chandana Guntupalli is Groundswell’s Donor Relations Manager. She has over six years of experience in non-profit development supporting programs focused on domestic violence, transitional housing, anti-bias education, and youth civic engagement. She has a Bachelor’s in Psychology and Philosophy from Michigan State University and a Master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies from Rutgers-Newark. She is excited about the community development and empowerment that Groundswell develops for farmers across the world.