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Youth Storytellers Program

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.

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