My First Goat: A Professor, Students, and some Goats Tackle Food Insecurity in Rural Guatemala

Two Worlds Come Together to Build New Solutions against Malnutrition

What does a USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) expert volunteer group from the island of Puerto Rico have to do with combatting food insecurity in Guatemala? Everything. 

F2F volunteer Gabriela Colón Rios trains Mam Indigenous women to better care for their goats which will improve food security and reduce high malnourishment rates. Chiantla, Guatemala. Photo Credit: Monica Gonzalez

In March 2023, a group of five eager F2F volunteers arrived in Huehuetenango (Huehue), Guatemala, with hearts and minds set on combatting food insecurity in a part of the world unknown to them. 

Over the next 10 days, this team of experts would consider Huehue, in Guatemala’s Western Highland region, their new home and office. Accompanying them on their mission would be faithful companions and mighty conduits of change: goats. 

Communities in this region live at altitudes reaching 10,000 feet above sea level nestled by captivating mountainous views and a horizon dotted by volcanoes in the distance. The volunteers helped three Mam Indigenous communities, which can trace their roots back to the great Maya civilizations dating back to the pre-Columbian era. 

Two very different worlds converged and worked together, for the first time, committed to one clear objective: improving the lives and prospects of Guatemalan women and children who have been deeply impacted by high rates of chronic child malnutrition, low education levels, and a lack of economic opportunities. 

In a country where agricultural production operates largely for exportation, the children under-five malnutrition rate in Guatemala is 47% and ranks in the top 10 countries worldwide, according to the World Bank. In Huehue, these rates reach an alarming 68% malnutrition rate for children under five. Child stunting is evident throughout these communities. In fact, Guatemala has the highest stunting rate in Latin America and ranks sixth in the world.

A Dream Team from Puerto Rico is Born 

Against this backdrop, a professor from the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Campus and four enthusiastic, young women animal science students enter equipped with knowledge and best practices in goat care and dairy production to improve this challenging outlook. 

Focused on the municipality of Chiantla, introducing dairy goats represents an innovative strategy involving resource-efficient livestock that will serve as needed catalysts of change. Goat dairy production can provide a new income source for families while also providing an excellent source of protein and other vital nutrients critical to childhood development and growth.

“Today, with one local goat per family, they are learning how to recognize if their goat is sick and seek technical help. Soon, they will go on to work with genetically crossed goats yielding higher milk production. In this way, with one goat, this project is paving the way for high impacts for these communities in the long term.”- Nicole Romero, F2F Guatemala volunteer.

F2F volunteers from Puerto Rico lead goat management training for Mam Indigenous women beneficiaries. Chiantla, Guatemala. Photo Credit: Monica Gonzalez

The F2F volunteers’ daily commute required a 4x4 vehicle driving at least two hours in and two hours out of their target communities along heavily bumpy and dusty roads at high altitudes. Nevertheless, Professor Rodriguez, and students, Nicole Romero, Zahylis Maldonado, Gabriela Colón, and Sofia Esquilin, maintained high spirits when working with the Mam Indigenous women who recently received dairy goats through USAID’s buy-in program entitled Cabras para la Prosperidad (CABPRO by its Spanish acronym), or Goats for Prosperity in English. 

Created in collaboration with Fundación Mario Lopez Estrada, which developed an associated goat breeding center for the program, CABPRO addresses Huehue’s acute malnutrition rates by providing dairy goats to families and training to care for them to provide milk and other byproducts for consumption and, eventually, as a new source of income. The program works closely with Mam Indigenous women, as many of the men have migrated to the United States or have found employment in distant, larger towns and cities. 

Today, a village mother with her goat is a hopeful sign that families from these rural communities have a shot at breaking the cycles of malnutrition and poverty in Huehue. To this end, the F2F volunteer team did not waste time diving in and transferring knowledge and practice from their respective fields in animal sciences and animal husbandry.

Being Part of an All-Women Volunteer Team 

Nicole Romero, a 28-year-old F2F volunteer, learned about the F2F program through her animal science university professor, Dr. Abner Rodriguez, in her homeland of Puerto Rico. Romero, like her fellow teammates, possessed extensive small ruminant knowledge, care, and management experience. Most importantly, all team members shared an openness to learn and experience new cultures as well as a desire to contribute to change by teaching. 

F2F volunteers (L to R) Sofia Esquilin Lopez and Gabriela Colón Rios provide visual aid material after goat care training to Mam indigenous women beneficiaries. Chiantla, Guatemala. Photo Credit: Monica Gonzalez

“I wanted to learn about different work areas and different cultures so that as a professional I can go back and design guidelines to better address these types of problems with limited resources,” Romero said. 

For Romero, it was her first time visiting Central America and working with community members with low levels of formal education and high illiteracy rates. Additionally, many Mam women beneficiaries do not speak Spanish as a first language, rather only their Indigenous Mam language. In response, the team quickly recalibrated their training plans and designed simpler and more dynamic teaching techniques to pass on basic goat care and management skills. Romero deeply believes in the work CABPRO is doing and that change is achievable with this powerful new information. 

“Today, with one local goat per family, they are learning how to recognize if their goat is sick and then seek technical help," Romero said. "Soon, they will go on to work with genetically crossed goats yielding higher milk production. In this way, with one goat, this project is paving the way for high impacts for these communities in the long term.” 

Working together as an all-women team greatly facilitated building rapport with the communities and aiding knowledge transfer with the dozens of women beneficiaries they trained. Based on their diverse expertise, each volunteer uniquely contributed to delivering critical information and best practices to improve the lives of the communities they reached. 

Hands-on Approach 

Sofia Esquilin Lopez trains animal scientist students and extensionists at Universidad de San Carlos in goat welfare. Photo Credit: Monica Gonzalez

The F2F dream team prepared graphic, instructional handouts that were shared with the women beneficiaries at the end of each hands-on training session. Materials included an informative, kid-friendly coloring book with crayons for the children who often accompanied their mothers at training sessions. 

The proud, new goat owners learned proper techniques on how to check on the goat’s health by measuring its girth or checking their eyes for signs of disease. Each volunteer ensured that every participant worked directly with the goats. For example, participants were responsible for checking the goat’s teeth to learn the age of the goat. By feeling a goat’s core for proper weight, the women learned how to regulate appropriate feeding. 

Other volunteer activities included visiting beneficiary homes to evaluate goat housing conditions and other best practices. While in Huehue, the Puerto Rican dream team also taught goat care techniques to 40 animal science students from the Centro Universitario de Nor Occidente and 20 agricultural extensionists from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Nutrition at the Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala’s leading university in veterinary sciences and agronomy. 

“This is my first goat. One day when this project finishes, we will know how to care for it, and it will help us generate income. For me, the goat will provide a future for my family by giving me milk for my baby.”- Marina Lopez, beneficiary/social promoter, Chiantla.

Building a New Legacy and Combatting Food Insecurity in Huehuetenango

In Chiantla, the ongoing support from F2F volunteers and CABPRO continues to provide a new lifeline of hope for their families and communities. 

“This is my first goat," said a social promoter and goat recipient from Chiantla, Marina Lopez. "One day when this project finishes, we will know how to care for it, and it will help us generate income. For me, the goat will provide a future for my family by giving me milk for my baby."

CABPRO designated social promoters among the goat recipients in each target village. As social promoters, they are now responsible for engaging the women participants to continue learning and sharing information to support one another. 

To date, F2F volunteers supporting CABPRO have trained 350 beneficiaries (95% Mam Indigenous women and largely youth), toward achieving self-sustainable backyard goat dairy production and goat breeding. Beyond this, the children are also learning to value and care for their goats that are changing prospects in these remote, but far from forgotten, areas of Guatemala.

The USAID John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program in Guatemala is implemented by Partners of the Americas. F2F connects specialized volunteers from the U.S. with farmers, cooperatives, agribusinesses, extension services, government agencies, and other institutions in developing countries.