Agros Blog

During times of global economic turmoil, providing access to training that empowers the poorest of this world becomes crucial. Through training and community education, people in Agros villages are able to start their own businesses and grow a robust local economy.

Benjamin and Catarina, a couple from the Agros Guatemala village ‘Cajixay’, have used their entrepreneurial spirit to start new businesses with the training they have received from Agros staff.  This training empowers them to develop new  income for their family.

Benjamin is the first man in three generations of his family to own land thanks to the support of Agros International. He and his wife Catarina have lived in Cajixay for all their lives, (except for a brief time during Guatemala’s civil war when they were forced from their village).  Even though Benjamin was the third generation to live in Cajixay, his family did not own its own land. As a boy, Benjamin would join his father at the large coastal farms working as a wage laborer.

“Life on those farms was difficult,” he remembers, years later. “We always left Cajixay healthy and strong and returned home weak and sick.”

Today, Benjamin no longer has to live the life of a day laborer. Since Agros offered credit for land for his community 5 years ago, Benjamin has been cultivating his own land.

“I, Benjamin, am the first man in my family in three generations to own land,” he humbly says.

To help earn extra income, Catarina has involved herself in a weaving project with Agros where she is learning to improve the cost efficiency of her already excellent weaving skills.

But Benjamin and Catarina were not satisfied just to improve skills they already possessed. They wanted to learn more. So when it came time to build new, permanent houses in Cajixay, they saw an opportunity to broaden their skill sets. Rather than just watch the house being built, Catarina and Benjamin had the Agros staff teach them how to actually build these structures. Now Catarina and Benjamin are earning additional income by building homes for other families in the village!

Since then, they have also learned how to construct a new type of stove, which they are also being hired to build.  Slowly but surely, they are ensuring that each home in Cajixay has an improved stove.

“We are so grateful for our American brothers who have helped to make the work of Agros possible and who visit Cajixay. With all of the support and love we have received, we are able to move forward.“