Project Description
Creative Solutions
The Garden’s Edge supports the dreams of emerging changemakers through small, creative projects that improve health conditions, food security, provide income for families, improve local economies, and develop leadership.
We finance Creative Solutions Projects for the creation of scalable businesses, social entrepreneurship projects or projects that support cultural and environmental preservation with long-term accompaniment that includes:
- Leadership skills.
- Budgeting, grant writing and project management.
- Opportunities to learn specific skills and technical support.
- Mentoring with elders to value the oral transmission of knowledge.
These small grants fund the many creative ideas and dreams that people want to implement in their villages, but do not have access to seed funding. The first creative solution project was for a party that built a temazcal (sauna) to help their patients have a safe place to heal and receive certain treatments during pregnancy.
After receiving a series of leadership classes, the group learned how to do a community diagnostic, how to formulate proposals and budgeting basics. Once their small business ideas were fully formed we funded these with Creative Solutions grants of $110 each. The youth received accompaniment and at the end of the program they participated in a field trip where they visited 10 community projects and, youth-led businesses, and cooperatives. Inspired to continue exploring their ideas, many of this first cohort have reapplied for a second Creative Solutions Grant to take their creative solutions projects to the next level.
Creative Solutions Projects are flexible as they meet the unique needs of each person and they cost approximately $100 – $1,250 each. This includes the small grants and technical accompaniment and training.
Creative Solutions Projects
Home Honey Production Project
This project helps generate income, but also preserve native pollinators that are at risk of extinction. Raising native bees is different from raising European honey bees. Their honey and pollen are highly medicinal and will be shared/gifted to the elders in the village of El Sauce.
Home Apothecary and Traditional Medicine
Aurelia Xitumul Iboy, has received several creative solutions grants to incrementally build her home apothecary and clinic and to broaden her services for patients from her rural community. Aurelia is trained in ear acupuncture and therapeutic massage. In 2023, she began working with a young Physical Therapist named Daniel Vasquez Chen. Daniel travels with Aurelia to rural communities surrounding Rabinal to give physical therapy treatments to families.
Native Tomato Rematriation Project
Francisco (Chico) Sic Sic, a young farmer from the village of Chichupac, has taken on a creative solutions grant to recuperate native tomato varieties. Where there were once dozens of native varieties, Guatemalan farmers now know only 2-3. The monoculture production of tomatoes over the last 50 years required the application of more and more agrochemicals. The plants became susceptible to disease, reducing the pool to a few hybrid grocery-store varieties. The Garden’s Edge was able to access 3 varieties of native tomato seeds from the U.S.D.A. Seed Bank, that had been collected in Guatemala in the 1970’s, before the introduction of hybrids. These varieties have since disappeared in Guatemala. We planted them in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then re-matriated the harvest to Guatemala where Chico had a great harvest! It is our hope that the beloved seeds that have disappeared from communities all around the world are found and one day returned home.