Christian Aid Week 2025
An inspirational story of how Christian Aid is helping transform lives.
Aurelia’s Story
Aurelia: Aurelia is an inspirational farmer and community leader who lives in Guatemala. She has eight grown-up children, lives with one of her sons and his wife and is visited every day by her many grandchildren. Aurelia’s family belongs to the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ (pronounced: Co WAY-chee) community of the Alta Verapaz region. It’s a close and supportive rural community who live by a blend of Mayan and Catholic traditions, holding the natural world as precious and sacred.
Aurelia's challenges: The climate crisis and industrial plantations have changed Q’eqchi’ land dramatically. Heatwaves, storms and unpredictable seasons are ravaging farms. Industrial agriculture is taking over the last of the region’s natural resources to feed the world’s richest countries. It’s a heartbreaking injustice that a community should be threatened by a climate crisis they didn’t cause so the vital crops Aurelia grows to feed her family are withering and dying before her eyes.
Like the other women and girls, Aurelia must go twice a day to collect water from a cenote – a natural sinkhole like a cave, with water at the bottom. Her walk takes around an hour each way, and part of it follows a steep, dark and slippery route close to the cenote. In Aurelia’s lifetime, water sources could be found much closer to home, but both heatwaves and industrial plantations have drained them dry. Collecting water takes longer, so there is less time for other activities, such as selling produce. This pushes families further into the poverty trap.
How Christian Aid helps Aurelia: Fortunately, Aurelia heard about a Christian Aid partner organisation called Congcoop that works in her area of Guatemala. Congcoop trains people like Aurelia in ways of farming that work with nature so that they produce crops that can cope with the impact of the climate crisis. Aurelia has learnt skills and knowledg which enable her to:
- grow native seeds that are better suited to the climate crisis,
- produce her own organic fertiliser,
- create nurseries,
- construct rainwater collection systems
- make nutritious food and medicine for her chickens.
Congcoop also provided Aurelia with seeds and tools for example dehydrators to help with income generation projects.
Aurelia can now grow cacao, sugarcane, cinnamon, corn and pineapples. She’s restoring her ability to provide food for her family. Because Aurelia’s now hopeful for the future, she’s developed and leads other activities in her community, including producing chocolate, establishing a farmers’ market, and fighting for women’s rights. With the support from Congcoop, Aurelia’s learnt how to make chocolate and to sell it at a good price so she can buy household essentials like soap and salt, and support her young grandchildren to stay in school.
Aurelia is a celebrated leader who holds the hopes of her community in her hands. Whatever she learns with Congcoop, she shares. As Aurelia trains other women in climate resilient farming, they too can adapt their practices and protect their families. Aurelia also supports Congcoop to address the pressure that Indigenous farmers feel to sell their land to developers. Congcoop discourages land sales and supports communities to make their land work for them, so they don’t feel that selling is their only option.
Aurelia is supported by Congcoop, which is supported by Christian Aid,
which in turn is supported by churches like Cheadle Hulme Methodist Church.
Together, we can put the unstoppable power of hope into action.
