Dear Plenty Friends,

Remember the old Billie Holliday song with the line, "Them that’s got shall get, Them that’s not shall lose, …but God bless the child who’s got his own?" I was reminded of that during my recent visit to Plenty projects in Guatemala and Belize. "Them that’s not," like Plenty’s program partners, win when they find ways to develop local self-sufficiency and cooperation to achieve basic health and economic aspirations. Over Plenty’s now 31-year history, it has been a priority to support the efforts of people with few material resources who are trying to become more self-sufficient.

Twenty-five years in Guatemala and fifteen years in Belize attest to the fact that self-sufficiency for people on the bottom economic rungs is never an overnight achievement. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to see people working at it year after year after year to benefit their families and communities and future generations.

More and more, Plenty’s self-sufficiency-promoting programs have centered around food production with an emphasis on fruits and vegetables and high-quality plant protein, especially, but not exclusively, soy. Louise Hagler who has been working with the Huichol people in Mexico helping them integrate soy-based foods into their diet writes from the Huichol Center in Huejuquilla, "We want to focus more on incorporating the use of amaranth, an indigenous grain with complete protein that was banned throughout the regions by the Spanish when they arrived because of its use in the indigenous religious ceremonies. Its use survived in the Sierra with the Huichol people because they were so isolated from outside influences. We started planting 2 types of amaranth last season from seed passed down through countless generations of Huicholes."

In Guatemala I visited the Mayan "Soyaria" in Molino Belen outside the town of Solola. I was there with Central American Food Security Initiative (CAFSI) Director Chuck Haren and Jorge Gonzalez who was a 12-year-old orphan when he hooked up with the Plenty reconstruction crew after the ’76 earthquake. Agostin and Elena Xoquic are Cakchiquel Maya and have been running the Soyaria with other community members producing soymilk, tofu, tempeh and soy ice-cream using the very same stainless steel equipment we brought down in an old school bus in 1980! Plenty is helping them renovate the original building and upgrade the equipment. Profits from the Soyaria have been used to fund community development projects such as a new water system and an outdoor basketball court for the school.

Jorge is now working with Plenty at UPAVIM in Guatemala City. UPAVIM is a women’s cooperative with a school, clinic, daycare and crafts businesses operating out of large 3-story building in an impoverished neighborhood in Guatemala City called La Esperanza. UPAVIM approached Plenty in 2003 to help them set up a facility for making soy milk. Milk is expensive in La Esperanza, and affordable fresh soy milk fills a widespread nutritional need for the children in the school and families in the surrounding community.

After Guatemala I went next door to Belize to visit another CAFSI Program we call Garden-Based Agriculture for Toledo’s Environment or "GATE." GATE, like the other divisions of CAFSI is an environmental project as well as a nutrition project in that it is equipping the next generation in Toledo with an understanding of sustainable agriculture and how it will help maintain a healthier rainforest and ocean ecology. I discovered something else about the project during my visits to some of the seventeen school garden sites: it’s a project that generates fun, along with a spirit of cooperation, both essential ingredients of any Plenty project, if not of life itself. You’ll notice we filled this summer Bulletin with photos which we think convey far better than words that intangible quality that we always want to share with you about the work in which you are a full and essential partner, and that is the very human joy and happiness that it can bring.

Yours truly,
Peter Schweitzer
Executive Director