ViviendasLeón Restores Rural Communities
Our Mission
ViviendasLeon is dedicated to eliminating rural poverty in Central America – Our mission is to empower and equip rural communities to be the agents of change, supporting women to own their achievements.
Our work with rural communities addresses the most persistent indicators of poverty: Lack of agency, lack of food and lack of income; and are exacerbated by lack of rainfall, lack of education and lack of capacities to improve their situation. These deficits are at the root of increasing migration from rural communities, particularly where we work in Guatemala.
Our programs:
Our programs result in a high success rate for women who go on to work in rural businesses, and who develop small-scale farming in their community.
These 70 farms, maintained by 50 families, now feed a total of 2,800 people from three communities in Nicaragua and one community in Guatemala, and provide incomes equal to college graduates working in their national economy. ViviendasLeón supports these women with weekly technical training to ensure their success and achieve the goal of permanent and sustainable farming.
Our impact:
Our efforts have created permanent change among families in rural communities who can now support themselves. And they can go on to support others in their communities. Families are more stable and they are healthier, their children attend school full time and more children from these families attend college, ending the intergenerational cycle of poverty in their family.
This is a Proof of Concept: it stabilizes families, it builds local economies and it restores resilient communities. It ends the cycle of poverty and reduces the impact of migration from communities throughout Central America.
2024: Our current expansion plan is to partner with adjacent organizations to increase the implementation of our proven program to other parts of Guatemala and Central America.
In Nicaragua:
Nicaragua has been embroiled in a national political crisis since 2018. The country was also deeply impacted by COVID and more than once threatened by destructive hurricanes. These factors have affected our farming program, yet they have not been deterred. As of the middle of 2024, we have increased our number of food security farms to 60 in operation providing organic food for more than 2,400 people in these communities.
Our impact:
“Small farms have more than doubled a family’s income from $90 to $180 month, and provide more than 25 varieties of vegetables and fruit to diversify their diet and improve their nutrition.“
New programs in Guatemala:
In Guatemala, the government responded admirably to COVID, and the country is recovering from the pandemic. With the start of construction of a teaching kitchen in a public school in Los Planes, we launched our new food and nutrition program in rural communities around Lake Atitlán.
Following this project, we began our core training program for adults in Guatemala in 2023. Human Capacity Training (HCT) provides the training and support so individuals can begin farming their own land and creating an income for their family.
In 2024 we have begun developing small, organic farms with 10 of the 21 women who have completed the HCT program as the first step to creating food security in their communities.
In Guatemala:
Since 2019 VL has worked in Guatemala to promote nutrition in schools by teaching parents cooking capacities with a broad selection of vegetables. As of the middle of 2024, we have established 10 new farms in the Los Planes community, providing organic food for more than 400 people in these communities.
Restarting travel in 2025:
We are excited to announce the return of our Immersion Travel programs for Schools and Volunteers beginning in 2025, in the Lake Atitlán region. Together we will work with the indigenous community of Los Planes, helping the families there to build food security farms. Training, food, water and small business are the cornerstones of our rural development program.
Learn more: Download our Immersion Travel Guide for Guatemala
Register:
Registration is now open. Use this link to register for this unique educational travel experience. .
Share This Forward
