Collaborative on Global Children's Issues

Vida Digna is located in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, in the southwest region, with a territorial reach of 1,951 square meters.  Its territory is quite volcanic and has thermal waters; its natural climate has allowed a coexistence with nature, taking us to a majestic veil accompanied by wind and mist. It is important when walking, for they announce ancestral and specific historical facts that help us to deepen the relationships of the different activities carried out by the people. Their communities are full of joy, full of knowledge, and the noise of the children of freedom that joins with the song of the birds of the mountains that surround it. These are the characteristics of the indigenous communities of Guatemala.

Migrating is painful, for this implies leaving behind the family, one’s experiences which have contributed to the development of a person. The fact of seeing the need to abandon what one has in order to have a better life and, after having survived the entire journey that involved arriving in the United States, realizing what all migrants are experiencing in their places of destination, including suffering discrimination, rejection, exclusion, being persecuted for trying to survive, all this is something traumatic for any person.

At Vida Digna, the family is the main axis of our work, because we have seen the damage caused by family separations, with girls and boys being the most affected and impacted, and mainly because, in our culture, unity is everything, together with harmony and nature. In the big cities, the above is not taken into account; they do not give it importance, and they are trapped in a political system that does not allow them to see reality. They make us think that the most important thing is to be more productive, regardless of the human or environmental cost that it may have in the short, medium, or long term in order to get massive productions that do not have the vision of a better life in communities. This has caused an abandonment of what the communities need to produce. However, it is not only thinking about consumption and use, but rather about the usefulness or harm that a production represents for the peoples. We have to look for transformative solutions that impact not only a group of people but society as a whole, regardless of ethnicity or race. Being reasonable humans, we have to defend natural resources, since they are what allow our survival.

We are working on the exchange of products and services with migrants who are in the United States and people who are in Guatemala, with the aim of practicing and continuing to develop the culture in both countries and thereby grow an integrated economy. Taking advantage of the means of communication and the progress that technology has had are useful to generate better solutions. It implies entering the political sphere because we know that there is extreme inequality between social classes at a global level, and this makes economic power have greater political weight and at the same time prevents us from being able to advance freely with what we want to do as a community. At the same time, education makes it possible to understand the language of the economic powers, which is increasingly pervasive and makes community life difficult.