Transcending Tradition - and Poverty

Guatemala is marked by volcanoes and valleys rich with volcanic soil, making it an agricultural Eden. Unfortunately, these features don’t necessarily translate to an abundance of wealth, especially not for residents of more rural communities like Marleny’s. 

“I was born and grew up in a neighborhood whose name tells you everything,” says Marleny (21). The name? “La Soledad [loneliness],” she reveals.

Most of the men typically work the land as day laborers, planting, tending and harvesting everything from coffee and cocoa to fruits and flowers. Like Marleny’s father, they rarely earn more than subsistent wages. The third of five children, Marleny recalls the difficulty her father endured in providing for his family, despite working long, hard hours from dawn to dusk.

While the men are off to work the agricultural fields, women typically perform household chores when the children are in school. “The noisy hours are at half-morning, when ladies head to the market and at noon, when they go to school to pick up their children,” Marleny says. But otherwise, the streets are as quiet as the women’s limited lives. “It seems, for a woman,” she adds, “there is nothing else to do.”

And then there are the limitations posed by poverty. Marleny recalls that even the most modest expenses were out of reach for her as a child. She cites as an example that whenever teachers announced a field trip or extracurricular activity (which required extra fees), Marleny would try — and fail — to stifle her tears of disappointment. Simply attending school would have been out of reach, she says, if not for the assistance CI provided.

“Fortunately, thanks to the support of the program,” Marleny adds, “I could attend school and study. And, I was the top student some years.”

Marleny’s diligent study habits and buoyant spirit were the perfect match for opportunities she found as a teen in CI’s programs. Becoming active in programs that teach leadership and other life skills, she says, were the rich soil that truly helped her blossom. “In Children International, I found all I was looking for.”

Of all her experiences and opportunities, Marleny says the capstone was her enrollment in CI’s Into Employment program. As soon as she learned it provides job-skills training, she signed up. Soon, she was taking courses that included hands-on training in sales and customer service. Ultimately, she learned basic accounting and even created a business plan.

With a very small capital investment from CI, Marleny opened a small clothing store in her neighborhood. Now, instead of feeling trapped in a land of loneliness and limitation, she says she feels like she brings happiness to her friends and neighbors by selling affordable clothes.

Marleny is something of a trailblazer, leading the way out of the solitary confines of women’s limited traditional roles here. Empowered with skills and opportunities made available through sponsorship, young women like Marleny are challenging and changing old perceptions. They are proving that female productivity can be radically different from what it was in the past.

“I like my job,” says Marleny. “I am very happy, because this business lets me have the satisfaction to handle my own money and to help my family.”

Providing young people with opportunities and seeing them use their own ambition — and talents honed through sponsorship — to rise above poverty is thrilling. And when kids like Marleny transform their lives, while also helping their families and communities, that’s the kind of movement we hope spreads across the globe!

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