WAKAMI and Sustaining Transformation in Guatemala: Want to help be part of the change?

In February, the Social Justice Team met and decided to designate 50% of the undesignated plate collection in both March and April to the Global Neighbors Project but this is just the beginning of an amazing partnership that you are invited to join.

Some history…

For the last three years, the Social Justice Team explored how to create a lasting partnership in the Highlands of Guatemala.  Our work began with a member, Jodie Kacer, who joined our congregation in 2010.  Jodie was a longtime UU from Wisconsin who knew the power and presence of international ministry.  Shortly after she joined our community, she wanted to know what international outreach we were conducting.  We didn’t have any international outreach!  Jodie slowly introduced us to the work she was engaged with in Guatemala.  Jodie passed away in 2012, but her work lived on as we held a congregational trip in 2013 and then submitted a project proposal to the Board of Trustees. 

As we have deepened our understanding of social justice ministry in an international context a few important values emerged.  We wanted any project to be sustainable and empowering.  We did not want to simply engage in toxic charity where we gave away stuff that would not change systems.  We also wanted to ensure that the least empowered and most vulnerable in the Highlands of Guatemala felt the greatest positive impact.  Last, we wanted to ensure that our work was responsive and collaborative.  We hoped for a project that met the desires and dreams of those living in Guatemala.

After exploring several organizations, we confirmed our desire to work with Maria Pacheco and her organization Wakami.  Maria has created a model in which Guatemalan women become business owners in a jewelry making business.  In addition to providing training, living wages and initial supplies, Maria also works with the family unit to help provide educational opportunities and healthcare for the children.  It’s a holistic model that is not a handout but an empowering hand-up.  Eventually, the women become owners of their own business.  Maria works with international designers to ensure that there is a consistent market for the products produced.  In addition, she fosters community and collaboration between the women creating Wakami “villages” across the Highlands.

We have been hoping for some time to plant a new Wakami village in Chuk Muk, a particularly resource strapped and isolated community.  Maria began exploring if Chuk Muk had the dynamics to sustain a Wakami village and community members eager to participate.  This past fall, Maria confirmed that a Wakami village will be possible in Chuk Muk.

How does this reflect our values?

As Unitarian Universalists we affirm and promote the interconnected web of all existence. In this modern world, hands from around the world make our daily lives possible from our clothing, food to even our homes. With this connection, comes a great responsibility. The World Neighbors Project seeks to balance our social justice ministry and fulfill our responsibility as world neighbors.

So what’s next?

We are partnering with several other organizations in order to cultivate a Wakami village in Chuk Muk.  We have put forth a goal of raising 7,000 in the next year for the village.  After two years, Maria’s business model allows the Wakami villages to be self-sustaining.  We intend to raise these funds through the plate collection, private donations and an art auction.  The art auction will be co-planned with Amy Hartman, the Social Justice Chair at the UU Fellowship of Lake Norman, the Sinapi Foundation, and some members from Holy Covenant, United Church of Christ who traveled with us to Guatemala last year. 

How can I help?

You can make a donation to this project by writing or check or utilizing our PayPal button found here  Please write Global Neighbors Project in the memo line.  If you are interested in learning more, please be in touch with Amy Hartman at amyhartman@bellsouth.net or Rev. Robin at robin@puuc.org

Spiritually Speaking: Let Go and Liberate

Edwin Friedman was a rabbi and family therapist who became one of the foundational leadership consultants in the 20^th century.  His primary work, Generation to Generation, detailed how communities behave according to generational patterns.  Much of his theory about communities was based on the family system.  Friedman believed that unhealthy or toxic systems could be transformed, in part, by self-differentiated leaders.  For Friedman, self-differentiation meant the ability to separate yourself from your environment, to have clarity in that separation that allowed you to reflect and see patterns, and to be able to engage conflict and risk while maintaining emotional regulation.  In some ways, Friedman’s work is so integrated into our understandings of communities that we use his theory without noticing it.  Leaders now might talk about the diagnosed patient in a system (the person who is essentially healthy and functions as a scapegoat) or how communities can be conflict-avoidant and enabling of toxic patterns.

Anyone who has ever gone through therapy after growing up in a family with toxic patterns of behavior can testify to the challenging work of becoming self-differentiated.  It certainly does not happen overnight, and often, requires on-going therapy and check-ins.  The human mind, especially under stress, reverts to old patterns of behavior easily.  Even when these patterns hurt ourselves and others, familiarity will often win in the face of stress and chaos. 

Friedman utilized a lot of parables in his work to help illustrate how to better self-differentiate.  One of my favorite parables is the rope story:

There once was a woman standing at the opening of a bridge.  She had a rope tied around her waist.  She held one end of the rope in her hand.  As a man approached her she shouted to him, “here, here, hold this.”  The man took the rope.  Suddenly the woman jumped off the bridge.  The man strained against the edge of the bridge holding onto the rope with great effort.  He started to shout for help.  The woman shouted from                  below the bridge, “Don’t let go of the rope!  I’ll die if you let go of the rope!  You are saving my life.” 

Friedman asks, “so what should the man do?”

Often, people will answer that the man should absolutely hold on to the rope.  Friedman asks further questions.  For how long?  Under what conditions?  Why did the woman hand him the road?  Can he really save her?  What if he can’t hold on?

The moral of the story emerges with each follow up question.  Don’t hold a rope that isn’t yours to hold. 

It sounds almost harsh to some ears, but Friedman would claim that it is self-differentiation. 

Certainly liberation is about fighting against forces far beyond our control.  Liberation is also about struggling against the mirror of those forces within ourselves.  Sometimes we are the one passing the rope and sometimes we are the one holding the rope.   Part of liberation, a powerful part, comes when we move beyond shame for our particular actions and begin to see the rope and what it tethers.  Seeing the rope is the first step of a self account that at least allows us to consciously choose to take the rope, to throw it or to put it down.  When we put it down, we get to decide what to do with that new rush of energy and opportunity.

As we join in deepening our spiritual understandings of liberation in our lives together this month, I encourage each of us to look for the ties that bind.

What would it be to let go? 

With faith and love,

Rev. Robin