lundi 17 février 2014

Preparing the meeting… with an AWESOME new backup for our project!


Preparing the meeting…
with an AWESOME new backup for our project!



As promised, we are excited to share the latest news about the preparation of the meeting of indigenous Maya midwives in Chiapas. Thank you to all of you who backed up our KissKissBankBank campaign and made this event possible.

In January, Mounia helped out our local partner OMIECH and the head of the Women and Midwives’ Section, Micaela Icó Bautista, to prepare all the administrative tasks for the event and lay out the calendar of the event. Budget, program, list of participants… it was a great team working experience.

When Mounia had to leave to get back to her studies in Albany, NY, Alice, who had just landed from France, took over in helping out for the preparation. The third volunteer of the team, Susannah, is helping us out from Mexico City where she is working on her dissertation.

Fifteen invitations have been sent out, and the other twenty will be delivered personally this week. The meeting will be happening this February 27th and 28th!

Last week, Alice and Micaela have bought all the supplies needed for the workshops during the meeting, including modeling clay for midwives who would like to share their thoughts but do not know how to write; pens and pencils; paper board…

Material
My name is...
For the midwives...
... with colors!

The funds will also be used to buy 40 clay pots and 40 clay bowls from a local artisan. It is an environmental-friendly and reusable solution, supporting a small businesses… and it is cheaper than plastic! So we are very happy to collaborate with this artisan for this event. In the same way, coffee and tea will be purchased from local vendors.

During the meeting, midwives will share their stories in three groups, and Tsotsil and Tseltal students will help compiling the ideas shared in each group in their native language, and prepare a Spanish translation. At the end of the meeting the midwives will make a public declaration. The two-day event will be photographed and filmed by Agripino Icó Bautista, and bulletins summarizing the meeting will be edited.

Meeting with the volunteers students from the UNICH

The edition of a DVD of the meeting and of the bulletins is made possible thanks to the support of the AWESOME Foundation. The Association MA and our partner OMIECH are the happy grantees of a 1000$ grant to help us with the postproduction of the meeting. The memory of the event will be shared in midwives’ home communities and beyond borders thanks to the edition of DVDs and bulletins.
We are proud to announce that our project won the AWESOME Without Borders team over, and that they are supporting the revival and protection of indigenous midwives’ knowledge. We would like to thank the AWESOME team for backing us up, thanks to this grant and to the work of our partners OMIECH, you will be able to gain access to the meeting!

We will keep you updated with the next steps of the project,

Alice & Mounia

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