ALDEA’s mission is to promote sustainable and community-centered development programs that improve the lives of families with limited resources in Guatemala’s rural Mayan communities.
ALDEA (Advancing Local Development through Empowerment and Action) is working to address the principal needs of rural, predominantly Mayan communities in the Department of Chimaltenango in Guatemala. ALDEA is a 501(c)(3) organization based in the U.S. and focuses on advocacy, education, fund development, and board-level oversight.
Through a grassroots development approach, ALDEA helps communities understand and tackle the root causes of the multifaceted problem of chronic malnutrition in infants and young children. The process is designed to achieve both short-term and longer-term results. In the short term, our programs lead to measurable improvements in chronic childhood malnutrition by supporting families to improve water and sanitation, infant and young children feeding, family planning, and other key drivers of malnutrition. Equally important, the positive experience of mobilizing to reduce chronic malnutrition gives community members the improved organizational and problem-solving skills they will need to find locally-driven solutions to additional priorities going forward.
ALDEA’s mission is to promote sustainable and community-centered development programs that improve the lives of families with limited resources in Guatemala’s rural Mayan communities.
Our Vision is that Guatemala’s rural Mayan peoples achieve lasting health and well-being.
Working in partnership with Mayan communities in the Guatemalan highlands toward their own goals is an important pillar of ALDEA's work.
The mobilization and empowerment of the entire community is an important aspect of all ALDEA's programs and approaches.
An essential part of the approach is for ALDEA and the communities and their local development committees (known by their Spanish acronym COCODES) to form strategic alliances with a range of actors including municipalities, national governmental entities, and other NGOs working in the area that can complement our work.
ALDEA's work is evidence-based, drawing on documented national and international research about what works best. This also means that we will periodically document and evaluate our work.
ALDEA strives to ensure that development activities are sustainable and cost-effective.
ALDEA is a learning organization. We will develop and test innovative approaches with our partner communities and continually engage in evaluation processes to determine what works. We will phase in new ideas, taking into consideration the conditions in each community, and basing our support on what is happening on the ground.
