“It was not just the building of the water tanks, but the beautiful way in which people were organizing as a community.”

As we enter the waning days of 2022, we at Concern America are full of gratitude on this Giving Tuesday. We are nearly at the end of our 50th anniversary year, and we are grateful for all that the Concern community has helped us to share and celebrate: our past, the present, and the change that we can create together in the future.

Because of your generosity, we’ve been able to expand and grow over this last year, increasing the impact on the communities served by Concern America-trained local health leaders. By supporting communities organizing and working together, the changes are integrated and lasting, affecting communities across generations.

We’d like to take this moment to express our appreciation to you, our Concern America family of supporters, volunteers, and donors, for all you do in supporting these community leaders and organizers, ensuring improved health care, clean water, education, and more for their communities. You are part of creating a more equitable world for all.

How community organizing is the key to change

At the core of Concern America’s work are the beautiful connections that result from community organizing; when people begin to work together to identify and meet a need such as a lack of potable water, they then have the confidence and skills to organize to meet other challenges they face. We have seen how this can transform communities far beyond the water system that is constructed, the health care provided, etc.

Silvestre, an environmental health and health promoter practitioner from Guatemala shared an experience while working with community members to build a water tank:“At several moments during construction, people would tell us how this was the first time that they had worked together in this way. It was not just the building of the water tanks, but the beautiful way in which people were organizing as a community.”

We have also seen communities go beyond addressing their immediate health care needs by working to transform the larger health systems, holding governments accountable for the work they are constitutionally obligated to do. For instance, after being drawn to health and helping his neighbors, Eduardo was trained as a health promoter practitioner and quickly became a leader in his community by teaching health and training new promoters.

To address health-related provisions in the Guatemalan Peace Accords, he helped form the Comisión de 15 (Commission of 15), which meets regularly with Guatemalan Ministry of Health personnel. The Commission’s work has been crucial in advocating for community health workers and midwives within the government system, ensuring their rights to provide care, accompany their patients when hospitalized, that there are indigenous speaking personnel at the hospitals, and so much more.

 

Through their immense resiliency, power, and dedication, Eduardo and the multitude of other community leaders demonstrate the long-term, life-changing aspect of Concern America’s work as an organization: local leaders exist in every corner of the world, and when provided the resources and training they need, they become the hope and future of their communities, regions, and our world.

Concern America’s Legacy for the Future

Community organizing bridges a barrier to opportunity often seen in places with material poverty: lack of investment in people, their education, their health, and their economic capabilities. If you believe in the power of long-term development and are able to give at this time, please consider supporting Concern America with a year-end gift. This will secure our ability to continue growing and expanding our programs, solidifying a legacy of community-led transformation.

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