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'With high heat, there is little we can do but adapt.'
Meet Amelia
A resourceful and determined 24-year-old farmer who lives with her husband and their two children, from the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ community of the Alta Verapaz region.
As the river runs dry and water becomes scarce, the vital crops that Amelia depends on wither and die before her eyes. It’s a heartbreaking injustice, when no more than a mile away, industrial plantations are taking the last of the region’s natural resources to feed the world’s richest countries.
Will you help fund vital agricultural training, so someone like Amelia can protect their children from hunger?
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Climate and farming
Amelia’s farm, first and foremost, feeds her young children. She tries to grow a range of crops and root vegetables that will provide her children with a balanced diet.
In this way, Amelia can protect them from malnutrition and the irreversible developmental damage it can cause.
But recent harvests have failed, and now the family’s diet largely consists of rice and tortillas. Fruit and vegetables have become unobtainable locally, depriving the children of the vital vitamins and minerals they need to thrive and grow.
As increasingly intense heatwaves and storms ravage Amelia’s farm, her ability to protect Lázaro and Yakelin is slipping away.
It's not fair that people are exploiting our resources and benefiting. We are the ones affected, but we don’t have anywhere else to go.
Pray with us that we can support someone like Amelia to tackle the climate crisis head-on.
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The climate crisis is heaping layers of agony on Amelia’s young family. It’s testimony to her endurance and strength that through heat, hunger, crop failure and water shortages, Amelia proactively set out to find solutions.
Amelia’s story is one of resistance, and it’s just beginning.
Please help fund vital agricultural training, so someone like Amelia can protect their children from hunger.
Funding and partnerships
With funding from Christian Aid, Congcoop support communities to return to Indigenous farming practices and adopt agroecological approaches that conserve their land, culture and livelihood.
By joining Congcoop, Amelia’s gaining the skills and knowledge to cultivate native seeds that are better suited to the changing climate. She’s planning planting schedules that will deliver multiple harvests throughout the year, making her own organic fertiliser, and constructing rainwater collection systems.
By changing the way she farms, Amelia’s pushing back against the climate crisis.
Amelia is recognised as a leader in her community. Whatever she learns, she shares – confidently training other women to adapt their farming practices too. Thanks to Amelia, every member of her community can access this specialist approach that’s a blend of ancient and modern wisdom.
With coaching from Congcoop, Amelia also raises awareness about the environmental impact of the nearby industrial monoculture plantations. She encourages people to not give up on their farmland, and to never sell it to developers.
There are three women from here who go to the training. We are representatives of our community, and after receiving this training, we cascade it to 28 more women. For example, we replicate how to produce organic fertiliser, and medication for chickens.
Your support
Amelia’s story reminds us that even the most proactive, determined and ambitious among us can need a helping hand in life.
Your support is urgently needed to ensure we can be there for Indigenous families who are bearing the full force of the climate crisis. It’s vital that our programme with Congcoop continues, so more farmers like Amelia can build their resilience to extreme weather and take back control of their harvests.
Your gifts can fund vital agricultural training and tools that unlock climate resilient farming methods.
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Let's pray that we can help leaders like Amelia to support their community in escaping poverty.
Next steps
Together, we can support people like Amelia to protect their families from hunger and malnutrition.
While giving praise for God’s glories this spring, let’s support our global neighbours, for whom the seasons are dramatically and dangerously shifting.
People who are living the brutal reality of ever-intensifying temperatures, storms, droughts and floods. Families whose children don’t have enough food to thrive and grow.
For the future, I don’t know what to expect, it could be worse, it could be better. The only one who can tell, is God.
Will you make a gift that supports a farmer like Amelia to protect their children from malnutrition?
Amelia’s tackling multiple threats to her family’s survival on a daily basis: extreme weather, failing crops, contaminated water, loss of income, hunger, and malnutrition.
But Amelia’s defiantly staring down these threats, remaining strong, resourceful and good humoured.
Together, we can be more like Amelia, and put the unstoppable power of hope into action, because a brighter, fairer future is possible.
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