A Quaker Human-Scale Development Program Finds New Partners in Latin America

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Written By Judy Maurer

Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash

Right Sharing of World Resources will begin serving women’s groups in Central America, beginning by providing small seed loans to women in Chiquimula, Guatemala. They will partner with a cooperative there, giving Right Sharing a source of local leadership and experience, an established network, and lower administrative costs. 

After a years-long discernment, the Right Sharing board chose expanding into Guatemala for its high rate of poverty, one of the highest in Latin America. On the plus side, there are approximately 20,000 Quakers in Guatemala in three yearly meetings. 

Right Sharing offers seed money for low-interest micro loans to women’s groups in Sierra Leone, Kenya and India, and soon in Guatemala. The groups provide training on small businesses before each woman receives a loan. As the women pay back their loans, the money is kept by the group to loan out to other women for new projects. The money stays in the community and never returns to RSWR.  

The type of businesses founded with Right Sharing funds include growing and selling vegetables, weaving mats from recycled fiber, second hand clothing sales, food carts, and small roadside cafes, etc. Camas Friends raised over $5,000 in 2020 for a project by a women's self-help group in rural Kenya.

Mrs. M. Rajeswari with her grandchildren. Photo courtesy of Right Sharing.

The impact of these loans on the women and their families can be profound. Here’s just one example, from Andhra Pradesh, India. After Mrs. M. Rajeswari’s son was killed in an accident, she and her husband had to raise their son’s four grandchildren as well as pay for their daughter’s marriage. She began selling costume jewelry and then joined a self-help group organized by the Wisdom Foundation. The women in this group received loans to open home-based businesses, so they could run their business and care for their children at the same time. With a loan of Rs. 10,000 (USD $133), she expanded her business. She has repaid two loan installments and is now able to provide for her son’s children and help her daughter’s children as well. 

Right Sharing was founded in 1969 as a project of Friends World Committee for Consultation. It has been an independent organization since 1999.

A personal note from your newsletter editor: In 1954, Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz was removed by a coup d’etat supported by the CIA and ordered by President Eisenhower after intense lobbying by the United Fruit Company. Arbenz had instituted land reform and other reforms. Authoritarian dictatorships and four decades of civil war followed, including genocide of Mayan peoples in southern Guatemala in the 1980’s. Organized crime operates largely unfettered now, particularly in the border regions, which contributes to high immigration to the US from Guatemala. 

Donations to Right Sharing designated for Guatemala can be considered reparations. Please give generously.

You may already know that my husband, Johan Maurer, recording clerk of Sierra-Cascades, was coordinator of Right Sharing from 1986 to 1993  - Judy Maurer

Judy Maurer
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