Project Highlight: Bolivia
Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing join others to lift people out of poverty, restore their dignity and fight injustice.
In Bolivia, the traditionally marginalized Guarani people are finding their place at the table through One Great Hour of Sharing-supported efforts to provide assistance and education to indigenous people groups.
Choroequepaio is a community of ten Guarani families that were able to leave exploitative jobs as laborers and start over to build a better community and life for their families through programs supported by One Great Hour of Sharing. The programs helped them gain legal title to land as well as access training in improved agricultural techniques. At first, they lived in tents and received death threats from their nonindigenous neighbors.
Today, the community of Choroequepaio thrives. Papaya and citrus trees line vegetable gardens for the families to eat and sell in the market. Community leader Eyber Barrientos expressed his hope for the next generation because of the opportunities they now have, “We want to ensure that all the young people have the opportunity to go to secondary school and have access to the education that most of us did not have.”