More nutritious food. A better future!

Malnutrition and Food Insecurity create a vicious cycle of poverty from which it is very difficult to emerge. To help fight these twin evils, Seeds for a Future’s primary focus is helping rural families ensure their access to enough nutrition-packed food, so children and adults can be strong and healthy.

Casa-Granja Concept

The practical goal of the “Casa-Granja” or Backyard Farm concept is to share skills and techniques to secure access to sufficient nutritious food. We coach families in:

• understanding nutrition needs, especially for children, and using the foods they have grown in familiar recipes.
• maintaining hygienic conditions and procedures in kitchens and food preparation with low-tech methods.
• managing household and garden wastes into compost and repurposed materials.

Strategies for food sustainability

The basic Casa-Granja strategies feature 2 years of intensive support for rural families via weekly coaching and regular workshops on how to:

• organize their patio space to maximize production of high-nutrition foods
• successfully raise nutritious vegetables and fruits, as well as small animals for protein
• use composting, permaculture and organic gardening techniques, for safer foods
• understand nutrition needs and how to enrich traditional meals
• keep their kitchen and food preparation areas clean and safe from pathogens

A Success Story

“Semillas Para El Futuro has been a hope for my life -- my baby was dying, his hair was falling out. They helped me with a blood test, they taught me what to give him to eat and how to prepare it. Now, thank God my baby is walking and smiling. The best thing is that together with my daughters he is learning to plant food.”
Antonia Marleni Perez Pumar

Diversify crops for a better future!

The #1 crop in Guatemala – Coffee! But with just one harvest annually and market price fluctuations, coffee families often suffer. To increase and stabilize household income, we coach farmers in:

• crop diversification by adding cacao, fruit and lumber trees and other locally popular food plants
• improved farming methods, including soil health, pruning techniques and organic fertilization and pest control
• developing micro-businesses based on locally popular agricultural products

The Cacao Pioneers

Chocolá is ideal for growing cacao – the primary ingredient in chocolate. Several years ago, Seeds started the Cacao Pioneers in Chocolá and helped them transform portions of their coffee plots by adding cacao and a diversified array of banana, papaya and native shade trees that can be harvested for lumber. By now, the Pioneers and other farmers have planted over 15,000 cacao and other valuable trees. The first cacao plants are now mature enough to produce good crops, which are being turned into artisanal chocolate products for the local market.

Expanding minds. And opportunities!

We work to provide learning in an atmosphere of support and coaching which helps embed the new skills and knowledge into the behavior and daily activities of participants. Our Community Learning Center is now run by Amigos de Chocolá   and hosts group meetings for family members on key aspects of our programs. Local sixth-graders receive free weekly classes in Reading Comprehension, and in our RIESTER Computer Lab they learn to use typical computer programs. All computers have access to the RACHEL System’s massive electronic library -- for information on family first aid, nutrition, farming or women’s health, for homework tasks, or general education at all levels.

Learning For a Better Future.

The value of learning is embedded in all our program activities, but we focus most strongly on enhanced learning opportunities for children and young people. The students who come for our weekly scheduled classes also come on their own, to play and learn in a friendly, safe environment. Our team members, already trained as nutrition and farming extensionists, also come to our Center for training in computer use and additional classes to enhance their skills. These young people are a true resource for community development.

Sharing knowledge and expertise.

Over the years, the Seeds Field Team has created guides to Nutritional Plants, How to Raise Rabbits, Basic Foods for Health, recipe books and many other learning resources. In 2017 they completed two detailed and fully-illustrated publications on our methods and strategies, Libro de Desarrollo (Development Book) and Libro de los Huertos y Casa Granja (Gardens and Back-yard Farms). These are meant to serve as resources for other groups which want to implement a program similar to our in their own area. Complete list of Seeds books

Chocolá, the first community

Seeds For a Future began work in the agricultural community of Chocolá, located on the Pacific piedmont of Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. The Chocolá region is a microcosm of the country as a whole, with a rich history from the great Maya civilization, through the reign of the Spanish, the 30+ years of civil war, to the modern history of governmental disinterest and neglect. The region has many natural resources – good soil, abundant sun and water – but its best resource is its people: hard-working families determined to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Learning and Working Together

Communities develop as people acquire the technical skills needed for success, identify opportunities for their own future, and learn to work together. By supporting each other to build a better life, individuals and families realize that this means a better life for all. The key to this process is education, not necessarily in a formal sense, but a practical, learning-by-doing education that helps people learn life-long skills and gain the confidence needed to lead others to start their own self-help activities and to work toward common goals.

Expansion and Outreach

Chocolá is where we first began coaching rural families and our office and Learning Center are there, but we now have participating families in Santo Tomás, Samayac, San Pablo Jocopilas, San Felipe and many other villages. Each has at least one Demonstration Center, often at the home of an experienced family. We have Demonstration Centers at 3 restaurants and conference centers in larger towns, where the public can learn about Seeds’ successful Casa-Granja concept. Our trained local team has helped more than 1400 families build better lives, and we are now teaching other non-profit groups how to employ Seeds’ methods with families in their own areas.

Elderly Care Center

An exciting new avenue of work was opened for us this past spring at Mis Años Dorados (My Golden Years), a day center for the elderly in the town of Samayac. On the grounds of the day center, we helped install a nutrition garden. The elderly guests are thrilled to care for the garden and contribute to the nutrition of meals at the center – sometimes the only meals they may have all day. In the coming months, we hope to help them install coops for raising poultry for eggs and meat.