Lucy is an IIRP Certified Trainer! 

Lucy has been an integral part of our work with restorative practices since the beginning, but in October she made it official by joining the ranks of a global community of certified trainers in restorative practices. This certification means that Lucy is now able to train people in the fundamentals of restorative practices and award them with a certificate verified by the International Institute of Restorative Practices. 

Flor is a Board Member of IIRP! 

After years of working closely with IIRP as a trainer and facilitator of restorative practices, Flor has joined the board of directors for this international institution. Her introduction to the group was formalized this month as she flew to Bethlehem Pennsylvania to participate in board meetings as well as the three day annual world conference on restorative practices that IIRP hosts. This new opportunity for Flor connects ALG to a whole new network of people and ideas that we believe will supplement and support the powerful work of our organization. 

Working on Peace in Guatemala with the German Embassy

ALG was invited by the German Embassy to participate in a program they are running to help the country heal from the thirty-year internal armed conflict that ended in 1996. For us at ALG this is a very important cause, the country is in many ways still wounded from the atrocities that occurred in those thirty years. In collaboration with the project of the embassy, we facilitated a circle with the members of the German Embassy team, as well as several representatives and directors of local organizations who work to seek justice for the harm caused. We hope it is the first of many collaborations. 

Development in the Organization of the International Collective of Restorative Practitioners

Two years ago we founded el Colectivo Internacional de Practicantes Restaurativas alongside restorative practitioners from across Guatemala. In these last two years the collective has grown to over eighty members and we have hosted several webinars, held many trainings, facilitated circles, and shared resources and experiences — we even started a research project with John Jay College! As we approached our third year, however, ALG began to reflect all that we had accomplished so far, and what we hoped to accomplish in the future. Ultimately, this conversation led to some restructuring within the collective, which we believe will lead to increase in the use and expansion of restorative practices across the region. Stay tuned for more updates from us about the collective and its projects. We have only just begun.

The month of September we accomplished quite a bit in the promotion of our mission. Read on below for a taste of the work we did in September.

Graduation

Congratulations to ALG’s Certificate in Leadership and Collaboration cohort of 2019! This year we graduated 32 leaders representing 12 different parts of Guatemala and El Salvador. They join a network of more than 120 leaders.  

Panamá

Early in the month of September, Flor went to Panama by the request of Fundación Amaneceres to offer facilitation in an informal Restorative Practice as well as co-facilitate a workshop on an Art of Hosting social technology called Strategic Re-Structuring. During this trip she was able to visit three local NGO’s who are interested in participating in our programs. She went in collaboration with Miguel Tello of the Strachan Foundation and left Pananá with exciting new ideas and wonderful new members of the network. 

SERES

In September, team members Bekah and Lucy facilitated four sessions of training in Restorative Practices for a group of community leaders in the refugee camps for the people displaced by Volcano Fuego’s fatal eruption of June 2018. The participants of the training were eager to begin implementing these practices first within their own families, and then later within their communities on the whole in an effort to shift the paradigm of the community from punitive to restorative. This project was made possible through a collaboration between ALG and SERES, an organization that works mostly with the youth of that area, but also with the community leaders, to create change. 

IIRP Training

At the end of this month, the ALG team, in collaboration with faculty member Roberto Tun led a training for 22 people. In the two days the participants were introduced to the basics of Restorative Practices, facilitating talking circles, and gave out certificates recognized by the International Institute of Restorative Practices.  We are always delighted to release new practitioners into the world -- more practitioners, more peace!

Miki Kashtan

For a week in September Bekah participated in a retreat led by Miki Kashtan. The focus of the retreat was Non-Violent Communication, and it featured presentations from people across Central America who are working in nonviolent communication or peacemaking. During the week, Bekah has the opportunity to offer a workshop on leadership and facilitation, and many opportunities to learn new things that will enhance the programs we offer. 

Featured collaborations from August 2019
Fe en Práctica
Each Monday during the month of August, our team has been working with a team from Fe en Práctica, an organization which facilitates the visit of medical missions teams to communities across Guatemala. The purpose of these meetings is to work through a specifically tailored leadership development program for the leaders of Fe en Practica in Guatemala.

Strachan Foundation
For the second year in a row, ALG has been invited to the annual Strachan Foundation Seminary not just as guests, but as co-facilitators. Strachan’s Seminary hosts 60 organizations from across Central America and this year we were invited to teach a session on the U Theory and Resilience in Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well co-facilitate a session on Regenerative Leadership.

Dr. Rochelle Arms Almengor
Early in the month of August a collaboration that has been in the works for some time officially began with a visit to Antigua from Dr. Rochelle Arms Almengor, professor, researcher and practitioner of Restorative Justice. Dr. Arms Almengor teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City where she is also the co-director of the Dispute Resolution Center. Her visit begins what we hope to be a multi-year research project on Restorative Justice and its use across the Americas.

Points of You
The organization Evolution 180 graciously offered a training in Points of You to forty members of our network of leaders without pay because they believe in the mission of our work. This is the first of three trainings that they have offered to our community and we look forward to equipping as many of the leaders in our network with these skills as possible.

Second National Educators for Peace Conference
Gersom Gamboa, graduate of ALG’s Leadership in Collaboration Certificate and organizer of the National Educators for Peace Conference invited us to teach a session on “Self-Care and the Life Plan of a Teacher and their Impact in the Education System”. Not only that, but Gersom extended three full scholarships including room and board to three leaders in the ALG network to attend the conference, pictured below with Flor Garcia, our Executive Director.

Institutional News
Welcome to the Board, Estela Jocón!

This year the ALG’s Board of Directors welcomes Estela Jocón a social worker and Maya Kaqchikel - Poqomam. Estela comes to the board with an extensive careers in program direction and community leadership. We are excited to have her voice on the board, helping protect ALG’s mission and bring us to where we want to go. Below, Estela is pictured signing the document that formalizes her membership to the board at its meeting last month.

[kc_row _id="209253"][kc_column width="12/12" _id="882263"][kc_column_text css_custom="{`kc-css`:{`any`:{`typography`:{`text-align|,p`:`justify`}}}}" _id="950917"]

Asociación para el Liderazgo en Guatemala feels satisfied and honored to have been invited to facilitate the Strachan Seminar on Self-Care that was held in Costa Rica in July 2018 and in which 65 NGO leaders from Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama participated.

All of them members of the Grantees Network of the Strachan Foundation. Self-care is something that has been often neglected in the NGOs. There are myths like self-care is a luxury, committed workers must sacrifice their personal life for the good of the mission, there is a mentality of scarcity and we can believe that working in an NGO we are indispensable. Such myths leads to burnout, where people stop working productively and even get sick. For an organization to be healthy and effective in its mission it is important that the organization take care of its personnel and that it has policies that reflect such self-care. This seminar offered techniques to promote self-care in the organizations. During the seminar, lectures and mini-workshops were presented on various aspects that participants can apply in their countries.

Asociación para el Liderazgo en Guatemala, represented by our Executive Director, Flor García Mencos, offered two plenary sessions and five mini workshops. At the end we could see with great satisfaction that these Central American leaders had increased their awareness of the importance of self-care and how to avoid burnout, they also acquired new practical skills to make changes in their organizations that will contribute to the well-being of staff and therefore have an impact on the quality of service to beneficiaries.

[/kc_column_text][/kc_column][/kc_row][kc_row use_container="yes" force="no" column_align="middle" _id="262906"][kc_column width="12/12" _id="15068"][kc_row_inner column_align="middle" _id="733682"][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="945522"][kc_single_image _id="857877" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lrJmfOto_wJ508BH_ZCqGWm8vtDlIdPjo1odTM0l_8snpEE2MwsUiXOpMVjirpT7y52hqM1sRgAWnwPq1ZH_=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="204723"][kc_single_image _id="152452" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/84AxImTsrICuxmKk5m7mv27lB0tV-6_Pr3rUksO_zFyICpI9rQYDtzKBfh3UfjahZp4A77Qi-32JFAiCwpoR=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="257391"][kc_single_image _id="528729" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/UYHun-Hp7YqC_BvlqDENgHnteUTvQ7svlcrw1mK3ZWjIEM5AvMIlU2HxpyjMJmJR8RERLVANNJMW3ZuXE12-=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][/kc_row_inner][kc_row_inner column_align="middle" _id="314848"][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="279832"][kc_single_image _id="51318" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/C0iZA5qyTHV7nUkjdhQLOJ7R63djk3C8fAAi-4KdZ27QetB_fEnDPcMux2ktsMRWiStqTead2GpirSsm6UiF=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="369518"][kc_single_image _id="977652" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yXjW__tgJYqsOfpNeRk-b5bgYo7L9o2jCXjgL31aryW6RJPBNb_IBYzj20SaPswGDGlzANYrUHsYh5UICOol=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][kc_column_inner width="33.33%" _id="319236"][kc_single_image _id="522102" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/cxmBGgnrOJ9yUb5CPSIrIWzX7zdirk7M5JqiP-E94GYUnjXGlbTy5tXi08myYCMmOoE-bHSF1HUrSaKvXVMY=w1366-h635-rw"][/kc_column_inner][/kc_row_inner][kc_single_image _id="677456" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/LE98JDlAvDjGp0Zd0HYMuq6lKHmo0YwFuYyKFyar3vLeTyvhGTLlPVgeBy8UDYMdjzfe1W5bHQgrOFX0oB3F=w1366-h586-rw"][/kc_column][/kc_row]

[kc_row use_container="yes" force="no" column_align="middle" _id="481800"][kc_column width="12/12" _id="506543"][kc_column_text css_custom="{`kc-css`:{`any`:{`typography`:{`text-align|,p`:`justify`}}}}" _id="644186"]

Asociación para el Liderazgo en Guatemala is honored to be part of the Design Board of the MULTISECTORAL PLAN OF PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT AND MENTAL HEALTH FOR POPULATIONS AFFECTED BY THE ERUPTION OF THE FUEGO VOLCANO IN GUATEMALA, coordinated by the Ministry of Health. We make our contribution from the experience of Restorative Practices. The natural disaster of the Volcán de Fuego affected thousands of people, the response of the Guatemalan people and the international community was felt with solidarity. After the first days since the eruption, the need for multisectoral coordination was evident to offer appropriate, dignified and committed psychosocial and mental health care. Once again we verify and affirm that the exercise of an integral and collaborative leadership increases the impact of any action in society. In this multisectoral table, leaders representing various national and international organizations contributed from their experience and knowledge, joining efforts to benefit the affected families.

[/kc_column_text][kc_single_image _id="324213" image_source="external_link" image_external_link="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/God5WFfocvsPwbmhA9NWgZY01fPlIJqeI9-xqDfV8NwHObOC2NweDfCNs9sdfkUYM6yTeGeE6uU7QpJlsZRi=w1366-h586-rw"][/kc_column][/kc_row]

We have been called by Hope, the oHpe that conquers the most hidden desires of the heart.

Today we find ourselves together, like that first time we met, with the difference that we have come together, that in your eyes I have learned what is not found in books or movies; I have learned what no one tells on the street, what people do not explain to you, because out there in that culture of discarding, now I can assure that there are honest, transparent hearts that are brothers and sisters, to whom life through the toughest and most resounding blows have fortunately consecrated as leaders; who share what they know about the journey, about forgiveness, about love, about diversity... talk about Hope!

This is the most important moment of my life, to be here with men and women whom I admire, respect, honor and celebrate their existence! Guatemala is so lucky to have you!

The November air brings to mind childhood memories, sweet memories of afternoon games, running in the streets, flying kites, playing tops, yoyos or just running after a cricket escaped into the bushes. November air! Longing … yearning for those unique cloudscape chapines, romantic sunsets, peaceful, family. November air!

The winds of November are not the same. Two years ago, bringing new vibes! It was two years since I received the first information about the existence of an organization whose main purpose was done to promote and strengthen the Guatemalan leadership. I didn’t think so much, after a few months received the surprising news that I had been selected to join the group that would be the first generation of graduates of the School Leaders LEADERSHIP.

I must confess that in my life there is a before and after my experience Leadership. In my journey through life, I worked, I pushed, I promoted processes for others and for others. I didn’t stop to think in me. Leadership noticed my interior, discovered and strengthened! I found with my peers and colleagues that our toolbox was always full in each of the working sessions. I realized that I had always devoted be a companion and now I allow my self to be accompanied.

I found in the circle of trust an oasis of innerpeace. A rewarding, satisfying experience. Our unique space as a big family, our circle, the strongest link between all members of this unique family: My family by choice. I no longer feel alone, because I found other spirits as restless as mine. Noble souls whose mission is to serve others. There I found myself and embraced my forgotten dreams and ideals. I saw my friends, I discovered that we all contribute our grain of corn to the development of our country.

Leadership changed my life. It definitely strengthened my knowledge and skills. After Leadership I practice a more conscious leadership, committed and sensitive to the characteristics and needs of the sectors I work with. I care more about my inner self, my child, my inner adult and my inner father.

I feel connected to my big family, sharing with the founders of the organization that has changed my life, it has been rewarding.Thank you all, thanks to all! Rocío, Flor, Kathy, Gary, Tamalyn. Thanks for your efforts, for your faith and love for humanity, for giving your heart to this noble project, thank you for believing in me, for giving me the opportunity to be a better person and better serve my country, thank you for giving me the tools to lead.

The winds of November are not the same, now remind me that I have a new family, my Family Leadership.

Alva Benilda Batres- First Generation Leadership.

Izabal, Guatemala

I was blessed 6 years ago when I had the opportunity to start to work for the Boca Costa Medical Mission. Through these years I´ve had the chance to be part of a wonderful, compassionated, committed and loving group of people that are willing to donate their money and time to make a difference on the lives of the people around the Boca Costa region.

I´ve also seen the Boca Costa Medical Mission grow, evolve and overcome problems that came across the roads. I have witnessed that it hasn´t been an easy job to keep up with the hard work and the all the people´s needs, since they are so many….but, with God´s help and all the amazing people that is willing to help; we have succeed.

One more thing I´ve been able to see is, communities getting benefited from the BCMM´s programs such as Medical Care, Education, surgeries, Dental Care, Feeding Program, Scholarships, Special need program, Stoves, construction and in addition to that, more and more people being health educated….so, they can prevent some medical issues.

I can see that these villages are grateful and feel supported. They trust the Medical Mission more than the health system in Guatemala, and…. that is of course, because of the love that all the people involved in the BCMM add to their jobs.

Talking the other day with the nurse in charge of the clinic in Xojolá about the BCMM, he was telling me that the health Center’s supervisor came to congratulate him for the work that the BCMM has done at Xojolá´s clinic. They where curios why people from the area would not go to the health centers to get medical care, why would they rather to go to the BCMM clinic. They were asking Manuel lots of questions of how the clinic worked. After Manuel explained to them about the clinic and the programs; they understood why people would come to us, and they even said that it was an amazing job that we were doing. I personally feel so proud of being part of this amazing organization.

Along with all the programs that the BCMM has offered to the communities, comes the de-worming & the Vitamina A program from vitamins Angel. Which I think is really good since will provide preventive care to 15 communities.

I see all the board members committed to help the BCMM to be able to continue with such a hard work but done with all of their love for the Guatemalan people. I know that we will find obstacles on our journey but I also know that we will be able to overcome them all. I also believe that the BCMM will continue to grow. I´m confident that the BCMM will be able to get more teams in the future, since everybody can see all the work done and the improvements provided to the communities.

All of the programs are important and really great but for me the stove project has a special meaning. To be able to improve the lives of these women that work so hard to provide food to their families. Reduce the use of fire wood and the respiratory diseases that all the family gets from smoke inhalation, is just a blessing for all the family members.

I´m sure we will continue with the hard work to keep running all the BCMM programs at the Boca Costa. Like I said before, it won´t be easy; we will find problems and more obstacles but I´m sure that we will do our best to work them out.

I would also like to mention the impact that the BCMM has on the employees…..since not only provide us jobs but also allow us to learn from other cultures. To know that are people with big hearts willing to help, makes us want to be part of such an amazing job and gives us strength to keep working.

Want to thank Jim & Dianne and all the members for giving so much to the Guatemalans.

Best Regards,

Maria José