The Mesoamerican School of Leadership (EML by its Spanish initials) conducted follow-up missions in Petén, Guatemala, and the Honduran Mosquitia last June and July. In Petén and the Honduran Mosquitia, the training program has worked with young people involved in the Community Forestry Organizations and the Territorial Councils, respectively.
Through these missions, the implementation of the Training Program in both territories has been followed up. The School’s Core Team participated, made up of the Director (Marcial López), the Technical and Monitoring Facilitator (Jorge Irán Vásquez), and the Communication Coordinator (Catalina Trejos). Also, the journalist Heliette Edlers offered her support and developed a consultancy to improve the methodological-operational work of the School and its work team.
These visits to the communities have made it possible to support the work carried out and a review of the effects of the global pandemic by COVID-2019. In both territories, they created a timeline of the work that has been done with the facilitators, reviewed methodological and administrative processes, participated in training workshops with young people, and carried out activities for the diagnosis and communication strategy.
The process of the School started in 2018 with a diagnosis that analyzed the situation of each organization and allowed establishing the guidelines for the development of the first training plan for the years 2019 – 2021.
To this end, they selected two facilitators per region and chose the organizations to work with, supported by ACOFOP (Association of Forest Communities of Petén) and MASTA (Honduras). Since then, in 2019 and 2020 they have worked on the implementation of Phase 1 of the Training Program.
During the Petén visit, a meeting took place with representatives of ACOFOP. They learned about the history of the Forest Concessions and discussed the trajectory of the Mesoamerican School of Leadership.
There were also meetings with young people participating in the MLE Training Program at the Integral Forestry Association Cruce a la Colorada (AFICC by its Spanish initials) and the Asociación Forestal Integral San Andrés de Petén (AFISAP by its Spanish initials) to learn about their perspectives and goals for the program.
In addition, they held a Phase 1 workshop: The creation of identity and high group empathy carried out in the Cooperative “La Técnica.” Young people from Cooperative “La Técnica” and “La Lucha” participated in this workshop. Also, different spaces were used to work jointly with the facilitators: Carolina Alvarado and Manuel Martinez.
These missions allowed us to reaffirm the importance of the role of the School in the communities, to measure the great responsibility and commitment that the facilitators have with the training program of the MLE – Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB by its Spanish initials). To know the challenges and possible areas for improvement and project ourselves into the future under our objective: to continue training leaders who represent a generational relay committed to their communities.
