Sylvia: Severing Ties in Guatemala

This Mother’s discharge from our program felt like divorcing a family member.

Finding Freedom through Friendship (FFF) has discharged women from our program in the past; we have a signed contract with each family that outlines our rules and regulations carefully. Before entering into FFF each mother is read the contract in her own dialect and she signs it. Nothing is left for misunderstanding. Partnerships toward physical, educational, medical and financial sustainability are what the word implies…two entities working together for an agreed upon benefit. Over the last ten years we have discharged a dozen participants who were not doing their part in working hard for their own well being. Each discharge felt like a figurative mark on a gun barrel, a “death” of a dream for an improved outcome for that particular widow and her children. Discharging Sylvia and her family was one of our most difficult organizational decisions in the life of our program. This Mother’s discharge from our program felt like divorcing a family member.

As a background, you can see our former post about Sylvia here:

(https://www.freedomthroughfriendship.org/supporting-good-guatemalan-father-worth-cost/). This fragile family thrived in their new FFF donated store; they adored their waterproof house we built them and the girls were doing well in school. Even the livestock multiplied. The stove needed to be replaced, as did the kitchen, but a large family is always going to have needs whether they live in Guatemala or the States. Our final step toward the long-term viability of Sylvia’s family was the graduation from high school for her older girls. They were SO close. Two more years of school and two of her brightest girls would hold the “holy grail” of education available to a rural girl born to an illiterate Guatemalan woman. Jobs would be available and choices of a future husband would be brighter for both of the girls. Our mutual partnership would realize our mutual long term goals for Sylvia’s family.

The last two visits to Sylvia’s from our board members showed irrevocable signs of a backward slide toward their previous life of chaos and deep poverty. The dog had been poisoned by a neighbor. The ducks had died, as had the rabbit. A few chickens were remaining but even they looked downtrodden. And worse, the store which cost our donor $3,000 was vacant except for the dust. The same micro business that had previously been an income source, a place for the children to use their math skills and a source of family and organizational pride was now shuttered and dusty. The walls echoed the sounds of lost promise and opportunity.

But the most distressing discovery were the girl’s report cards…columns of zeros under each subject. Zeros only exist if a high school student is not occupying a school desk and a mother is not supervising school attendance. Empty stores can only happen if business oversight and lessons are ignored. Livestock dies if left unattended. Families slide back into intractable poverty if the fires of passion for a better life are left to smolder.

Partnerships crumble when plans for outcomes are one-sided.

We will never fully understand where the fork in the road for Sylvia’s family happened. Our facilitator witnessed and reported the fractures that were evident but smart teenage hormonal girls are masters of hiding things they don’t wish seen. In retrospect, the downhill slide was evident in the smallest of ways until the truth could no longer be suppressed. Stressed parents sometimes make a choice to ignore things that are too difficult to deal with. The reality of nonprofit management is that we can be guilty of working toward ideals that fit ourselves more aptly than they do our recipients.

The bottom line, both financially and organizationally, is that our funds can not be spent on giving a hand up when a family is capable of creating a better future for themselves and ignores the opportunity. The worry in these parent’s faces (top photo) is evident and we feel the same concerns; we have known this family since 2010. The future of Sylvia’s family is now left to the financial resources of her oldest daughter, who took our lessons well and stepped into opportunities offered her. We watched these children grow, thrive, and now struggle once again. Walking away is the right thing for our organizational principles, but ethics are a cold bedfellow when the future of a family is at stake.