Chipatá

Community Life:

Community Life:

  • Chipatá was founded 50 years ago by 10 Maya Kaqchikel families. Now, the village has grown to 280 families.
  • The community grew very quickly. It was common to find families with 10, 12 or even up to 17 members, but many of the children and women died because of poor conditions and lack of access to resources.
  • The village is located almost four miles from the county seat of Santa Apolonia. The community has always had very strong committees, and the first municipal mayor was actually born in Chipatá.
  • The first infrastructure built in the community was the primary school Las Mejoranas, named this way because it was built to “mejorar” (improve) the living conditions in the village. The primary school offers education from pre-school to sixth grade.
  • Chipatá’s name comes from an oak tree called “pata’n” in Kaqchikel. There were many of these trees in the area and there is still one in the school.
  • For medical attention people need to travel to Santa Apolonia. The community has access to public transportation two days per week.
  • Water access was not a problem in Chipatá initially, because there was a clean river nearby, but the river has been contaminated by the other communities upstream.
  • The community has had electricity service for 10 years.
  • The families from Chipatá engage in subsistence agriculture, producing corn and beans for their own consumption, without a surplus that they can sell.

Our Partnership:

When we began working with Chipatá in October 2014, 55 percent of the community’s children under five suffered from chronic malnutrition. When we finished our integrated approach programs in Chipatá in June 2016, that number had been reduced to 27 percent.

Integrated Approach to Development: Chipatá’s Progress to Date

  • Community Mobilization and Empowerment: Complete
  • Nutrition: Complete
  • Water, Sanitation & Hygiene: Complete
  • Food Security (Sustainable Agriculture): Complete 
  • Family Planning: Complete – During our baseline assessment, we found only 21 percent of women in the community using family planning methods. After only a few months of implementing this program component, that number almost doubled.
  • Disaster Risk Reduction: Complete

See more about how we work in our partner communities

Community Perspectives:

“The health of my family has always been very poor. My six children have been very affected by the smoke in the kitchen when I am cooking, especially by respiratory diseases. My husband has not been very helpful because he has alcoholism problems. Thanks to the stove we built together with the help of ABPD/ALDEA, we now have a smoke-free kitchen, so my children do not get sick so often. Now I also know my rights and my family’s, and I can demand my husband to work for our kids’ welfare.”

– Rogelia Sotz Ramírez, 43 (March 2016)