San Lucas Tolim

1
San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemalacontinued (Part 2)
2
Education

• Land without other institutional amenities does
  not necessarily lead to poverty reduction. The
  following photo shows a school house constructed
  for the children of the community of Santa
  Teresita.
• In general, in San Lucas Tolimán, the parroquia
  has assisted in the construction of 17 schools,
  which is about 17 more than would have been
  constructed if the community had waited patiently
  on the government.

3
Santa Teresita school house.
4
Health Care

• In 1964, when the sister parish relationship
  began, there was essentially no formal health
  care available in San Lucas. The parish built a
  small clinic that welcomed anyone regard-less of
  ability to pay. It soon became apparent that a
  new full-service hospital was needed. The
  following photos shows the hospital in
  mid-construction (1995, 2001). It has since been
  completed and is serving hundreds of patients.

5
San Lucas Tolimán Hospital (1995).
6
Hospital nearing completion (2001) Abells
Taylor, Lauren, John.
7
Health care continued

• Father John Goggin, in conjunction with the
  medical community, facilitates medical outreach
  to outlying aldeas (villages).
• In the photo below, a medical volunteer (Karen)
  attends to the needs of patients who rarely get
  to see a doctor.

8
Medical outreach to the aldeas.
9
Jobs

• To eliminate poverty, a number of pieces of a
  complicated development puzzle have to fit
  together. Employment is one of those pieces.
• In 1964, there were few skilled workers in San
  Lucas. A new building (Casa Madre, in the
  following photo) was needed to house Catholic
  sisters from the US coming to start the education
  program. A fateful decision was made to use the
  existing labor force and local materials in its
  construction, rather than import skilled outside
  workers and materials.

10
Casa Madre beginnings of the apprenticeship
program
11
Jobs continued

• The construction of this building (as with many
  other community projects) followed the
  subsidiarity principal as articulated by E.F.
  Schumacher whereby greater development occurs
  when more stages of production are undertaken at
  the local level. In this particular case, a local
  stonemason on the project shared his wisdom with
  a number of volunteers. They, in turn, gained
  valuable experience which they used to obtain
  jobs or to start their own businesses.

12
Apprenticeship program

• The valuable learning that took place with the
  construction of Casa Madre led to the creation of
  an apprenticeship program. Its really pretty
  simple. If you are down on your luck and need a
  job, you come to the parish and lay out your
  situation. Youll be asked two things a) What
  would you like to learn to do? and b) When can
  you start? Youll be put to work on any number of
  parish-related projects where youll learn
  valuable skills. The aforementioned hospital is a
  good example.

13
Apprenticeship program continued

• The apprenticeship program is especially targeted
  at the communitys youth. Drugs, gangs, and
  violence are always more appealing when a young
  person has few opportunities in life.
• The following photo shows a young apprentice,
  Luis, and his foreman, Angel, in front of a home
  under construction. Luis told me that he was
  grateful for the opportunity to be off the
  streets and learn a trade.
• The next photo shows past apprentices running
  their own factory.

14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
Homes and reforestation

• To provide families with housing, one needs
  lumber. To provide lumber, one needs trees. To
  provide trees, one needs forests. Unfortunately,
  forests are in short supply in Guatemala too
  many people competing for too little land. So,
  San Lucas started a reforestation program.
  Experimentation with Cypress trees has produced
  fast growing hardwood trees that can be used for
  home construction and other projects. The
  seedlings are used to help reforest the
  mountainsides.

17
Reforestation program Turibio Chajil (mgr).
18
Reforestation program.
19
Homes and experimental farming

• Providing families with land and housing is a
  noble goal. But, how can they put food on the
  table when there is so little land to be
  distributed3 acres at most? An experimental farm
  was developed to try to answer this question.
  Lots of work on soils, yields, composting, and
  such, has provided families with valuable
  information. With a careful combination of corn,
  beans, squash, citrus trees, chickens, rabbits,
  and perhaps an acre devoted to the valuable cash
  crop coffee, it is possible to get by.

20
Experimental farm note the (light-colored) mulch
from coffee bean skins.
21
Experimental farm working the compost pile.
22
Water projects

• In lieu of the kind of government services we
  take for granted in the US, the parish fills in
  many gaps, one of which is the provision of
  drinkable water.
• Andres Chajil has been in charge of water
  projects from the outset. (Following photo).
• For every new parcel of land that is developed, a
  water source must be found.
• The other photo shows a water line extending from
  Lake Atitlán to outlying communities that went
  without water for years.

23
Andres Chajil
24
Water project Again, note the use of culturally
appropriate technology.