It takes seven hours to reach the Ixil region of Guatemala, though it’s only 150 miles from Guatemala City. The road is twisty, windy, and bumpy but also full of spectacular mountainous scenery. Ixils are proud Mayan descendants who experienced the worst of Guatemala’s civil war in the 1980s. The repercussions of that violent time are still felt today. Despite decades of international cooperation and aid, 82% of Ixils still live in extreme poverty and 75% of children are chronically malnourished.

Why is it so hard to overcome these tragic conditions? There are myriad reasons and many of them are systemic. For example, the region lacks access to markets, education, government services, health care, jobs, and so much more.

Unlike past aid programs, Healthy Start tackles hunger and extreme poverty at its roots. We don’t take shortcuts.

Our solution follows a three-step, four-year proven effective program that focuses on:

1. Addressing hunger and child malnutrition. When families are hungry the children suffer the most. Healthy Start gives families the immediate food support they desperately need and helps them develop capacities to produce their own food.
2. Preventing child malnutrition. It all starts in pregnancy. Healthy Start creates networks of community health workers (brigadistas) who provide health care and health education to babies and pregnant women in villages with few or no services. Our goal is to have zero cases of low weight children at birth. Once the baby is born, each mother and child are part of an educational and monitoring program that covers the first 1000 days of a baby’s life, a critical period where 80% of the brain is developing including fine and gross motor skills.
3. Overcoming malnutrition. This is what makes Healthy Start a long-lasting solution. Overcoming malnutrition means:

• Stopping the sources of illness and infection: No children can grow healthy if their house lacks basic services. We provide a three-year progressive housing improvement program that allows families to put cement floors, stop roof leaks, have filters for clean and safe water, improve latrines, and build stoves to reduce wood consumption and avoid smoke inside the house. By doing this we prevent families from being exposed to parasites, bacteria, and respiratory and gastrointestinal infections.
• Improving agricultural skills to produce nutritional food and make a profit: Healthy Start families experienced agronomist help so they could adopt agricultural best practices to improve their yields, move from one to three harvests per year and achieve food security. The adoption of best agricultural practices and simple but effective technologies is a game changer for families.
• Invest in women entrepreneurship activities to diversify the household income: Ixil women are smart and hard-working, through rural community banks women start saving, learn how to manage credits and start market oriented production initiatives. Women-lead business are very successful and ensure that their profits are reinvested in improving the family wellbeing.