Serving Central America, Cuba and The Caribbean

March 26, 2019

The Village Transformation Program

Zacapa, Guatemala

30 Guatemalan families will increase their self-sufficiency and increase their nutrition standards through a chicken coop microbusiness that will be achieved through training, construction, and procurement of egg laying hens.

The Village Transformation Program-Microenterprise (VT-E) builds pathways to self-reliance through the development of microenterprises in communities in Guatemala. The program empowers individuals to provide for their families and learn valuable savings habits over the short and long term.

VT-E will assist beneficiaries in setting up chicken coops for income-generation and nutrition improvement in a sustainable way, for 30 participant Guatemalan families. Throughout the program, families will save any eggs they don’t consume to sell them on the market. The savings will be used to purchase additional hens, build more coops or launch other types of small businesses, thus improving the family’s diet and enhancing the ability of beneficiary families to be self-reliant.

This program is a collaborative project of Cross Catholic Outreach (CCO) and Hope of Life (HOL), with the assistance of Outreach Aid to the Americas (OAA) as subcontractor.

Guatemala has one of the highest inequality rates in Latin America, with some of the worst malnutrition, poverty, and maternal-child mortality rates in the region, especially in rural and indigenous areas. Guatemala ranks among the worst in the world for life expectancy. The country has one of the worst rates of malnutrition in the world: 44 percent of all children under five have stunted growth due to malnutrition. Employment opportunities are scarce and most of the poor depend on subsistence farming to survive. About two-thirds of the country’s children live in poverty.