Eat Better Wa'ik

Malnutrition does not discriminate, and affects all people from the basis of inequality and the coexistence of its multiple forms of undernourishment, overconsumption and non-transmittable diseases (and now transmittable ones). Far too long has technical food wording been assumed to be understood by all, when only a very few really grasp its entirety. And this disconnects us from the problem, solution and the value within us and our ecosystem, when food is at the core of our livelihoods and resilience in all aspects, yet it is still hazardous. With Eat Better Wa'ik, we bring people together by generating food awareness and action to reduce malnutrition through creative and inclusive education, economics, transformative agriculture, consumption and technology. We merge food, climate and rights to improve the change of narrative, comprehension and behavior from and towards food, for systems change, transparent collaboration, and livelihood re-skilling for a new re-connection of regenerative generations. 

A mother was feeding her baby soda in a bottle instead of milk. When I asked her why, she replied because soda was more expensive than milk. In her belief, if something was more expensive, then it must be better. Misconceptions, disinformation and false aspirations of food are the stumbling blocks for resilience in any field. Food comes first, from a consumer or producer, and any person involved in eating to live (and healthy). Moreover, we later understood that the mother did not value herself as a good enough woman, and even less so her free breast milk to nourish her baby. Guatemala has the highest stunting rates in Latin America (and within top worldwide) with half of the children stunted (46.5% for years). Wasting according to national statistics doubled in 2020 from 20% of recent years. Although these are alarming numbers, new study of the double burden of malnutrition from WFP Guatemala finally shed light on the other side of the coin with nearly 43% of adults overweight and 20% obese (similar proportions as undernourishment), but "solutions" are still implemented in silos neglecting the inter-relation of all forms of malnutrition altogether, suffering the social costs of corruption and kleptocracy. 

Eat Better Wa'ik intertwines and connects the dots of what is already in existence, but poorly managed within the food systems, and revalues those involved and their surroundings to improve our behavior and decision-making. We use our the wonders of creativity and inclusion to address the elephant in the room, and solve it within all of the participant's own identity, place and their preferred area of interest (being drawn to) in the food ecosystem so they can naturalize in their sphere what they might be doing off and be agents of change themselves. We work within specific communities (rural, peri-urban, urban) with all age groups from all socio-economic backgrounds by developing  and enlightening better pathways on individuals, families, consumers, producers, public and corporate policies with multiple approaches. We place education at the core of our approach, whether with our services and products offline or online, we educate in a seemingless way, making the most in empowering communities with remote organization to replicate our joint examples. From emergency response tangible improved food baskets, women remote technological training in entrepreneurship and up-skilling on food, climate and rights, and tech-ed on their agri-crops for health purposes, online market connection

Since malnutrition can impact everyone in its multiple forms, we serve all age groups in all spheres. We have clear that we are not all producers (although as we have seen recently, every household should have an edible garden), we are all consumers because everyone needs food to live (human right to food, and quality and healthy nutritious food). We democratize the value of food, valuing where it comes from, the land, soil, water, time, people involved to bring the outmost respect of food being sacred, in line with cultural identity to each specific community or entity we support. Not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a tailor made with their surroundings, beliefs and faith (those are also sacred), so to align both sacred with one purpose of health and wellbeing through food nutrition, nature positive and resilient community interactions. 

We clear out our efforts in three ways: 1) communities: following the lines of a non-profit work with development project and community participation as part of our team; 2) individuals: we spread our wings functioning as a hybrid of non-profit and for-profit developing services and products, such as dialogues, foods baskets, awareness campaigns, and technology interaction to "subsidize" too #1; 3) public and corporate policies: we go beyond just transforming consumers, we bring people together to engage with decision-makers, and we also assess them in shining lights on pathways and urgency of the issue in a strategic way. 

We understand there needs to be an alignment of multiple stakeholders and people to change dynamics (power dynamics, systems biases and silos, our perception and access to food). And also lagging behind in technology and digital access and interaction. Being Guatemala a mostly agricultural country, with numerous modern slavery forms within the human capital in food, we upskill then with technology usage (with the basics with communicating, exchanging their good placing them online, to even creations of bank accounts, and remote/online guidance in human rights). Over the years, women have been more attentive and involved in the process, and we have seen how men in their communities are willing to support their endeavors, but also seen how violence within a household (and specially to women) was even stressed with hurricanes devastating their surroundings.  

We started specifically in urban areas with middle to low income families (and not necessarily the most vulnerable in rural areas since all the attention of developments was still going here), and addressed them and with them since they were too the next threshold that was being neglected and the driver of a potential emerging economy. Over the years since 2015 we started, we have grown to attend mixing even very low income families, with high income ones. We have attained more than half of the departments of Guatemala, either through food assistance, project development and training, and have seen the multiple facets of livelihoods in Guatemala. We have also delivered our Wa'ik experience internationally and implemented Wa'ik projects in the United States. 

To be resilient in any sphere, food and health are at the core human and planetary thrive. Although food is a priority to live, it is often not considered when other stresses need to be focused on (such as work to make ends meet - to put "bread on the table" (why not a saying "to put fruit on the table"?), or time and convenience). Food also comes from being resilient in changing in climate, behavior and policies, and cognitive and physical development for any other opportunities. Regeneration generation comes beyond just soil, its an entire people/nature ecosystem. 

We are in continuous growth since 2020, the year in the pandemic, where we increased our reach by six-fold from the cumulative people impacted since we started in 2015 (considering 2018 our founder focused solely in consulting for WFP). That year, we saw how our ideas have been translated into products following our education perspectives. We handled thousands of pounds of produce towards the nutritious food baskets bought from smallholder farmers, market vendors and food banks, as a visualization of a diversity of foods to consume, replicate and even grow. Here we focused mostly in communities and individuals, with remote and in-person approach, and led is to receive accolades such as the Heroes of the Pandemic, recognized as trailblazing and inspiring female leader for gender equity and future of gastronomy. With that, this year we emphasized in digital connectivity and training, and convening stakeholders together to push in those policies. 

With thousands and thousand of products or stuff there are available in the world and plenty going to waste or lost, to be innovative does not mean to bring another shiny new product that will resolve our issues. Instead, we are innovative because we re-arrange or find a creative twist that is dignified for a larger population to be part of the solution, in a comprehended and participatory way. Anyone can be innovative in doing something differently and in a better way. Life is an experience, so we make our approached with the senses, feelings in experiencing the change we want to achieve through others. We cannot make just by ourselves. We want to share it to the world and be specific to those to identity better or even tailor made (personalize) their experience for better good food in all perspectives. If we are dissatisfied, we move our way forward with exemplary ideas, products and services. From last year, we've said: "in these times of change, if we don't improve, then... what is there left"? We connect people who wouldn't usually connect, being eating the same produce, connecting them with wider markets with a purpose, re-imagining and putting our voices out there of how trade, policies, interaction, critical decision making, and value of women and our food from the very beginning and essence (breastmilk), merging them with climate and environment, how intertwined we are, and therefore resilient. We creates spaces and new perspectives with people, speak, write and collaborate transparently. 

From 2015-2019, Eat Better Wa’ik had reached around 1,500 people following our education services modules given to children, parents, corporate clients and government branches, conferences audience, and also through our product back then, organic fertilizer.

In 2020, our food education services changed into products called Improved Food Baskets (servicing in them our restructured courses) on food, health, gender. This was our education seeminglylessly, leading by example with healthy and nutritious food emergency response and recovery programs that have been ongoing since June 2020. We impacted directly and through partnership more than 6,000 people in just half a year, supported by small and medium grants, accelerators, donations and also later income from offering the baskets to wider public (who could afford them). We got national and global recognition.

We are diversifying our services training entrepreneurs in food, climate and rights, we are taking our food dialogues and actions to a higher level with global coalitions to transform food systems at a country level. We continue our star products and developing new ones that reflect our creativity for each age group and thus generating continuous income, as well as fees for our creative leadership and simple technology approach.

Since we started, we have clear that measuring of change was not going to happen in the short term, and we also wanted to move beyond the "cortoplacismo" (short-term-ness), and bring value in aspects we consider as generational change, hence we use the term regeneration generations. We of course had to follow the traditional measurement of forms of malnutrition, such as body-mass index, weight, height. But we also moved passed those in:

• school and job performance (cognitive level and if needed physical one too if it was a high-intensive one)
• understanding the origin of food, the processes gone, the persons involved, value of their cultural techniques and recovering healthier perceptions, aspirations
• the comparative and critical assessments of visual stimulations (marketing) with the time/cost, price of food; 
• Agriculture for health purposes (their own) and create a new markets oriented in those goals, with zero-deforestation and slavery, and promote the value of their products with diversity (away from traditional monocultures). 
• objectives, goals and creative ways to portray food to change mindset, behavior and understanding
• number of partners and quality of them with their input and trust into Wa'ik to collaborate as a whole; 
• number of people trained by Wa'ik and the impact it has had it their endeavors 
• Entities that seeks our Wa'ik experience, and that our voice and actions are considered with the spheres we enter and shape global, national and corporate policies of improved change. 
• Through food engage in reduction of violence against women, reports done, support systems in place.

In Wa'ik we are seven Board Members, two full-time staff as Executive Director and Projects Officer, two part-time service providers (finance and graphic design), our community team in Concepción Pinula of five members, interns and volunteers (variable), and partners for each project, initiative to complement and scale our work. 

The founder of Wa'ik is Bibi la Luz, where she started her nutrition-health since she was little because of her own problems. Being not great in science, but in social aspects, while studying at university in international political economy and development, she found this brilliant pathway to focus on access to food and nutrition from that side. She is a Global Shaper and part of multiple organizations to leach and inspire change with many more. Bibi's parents are part of the core team, as a family cooperative in social change, her mother being designer, gardener, and cook and her dad a history writer and former diplomat, both of them shining a higher light on Guatemalan cultural aspects. In her team, she has three communicators: gender projects, sustainable development project and healthy advertisement. Moreover, we have food engineers and cooks, nutrition doctors to guide us more in the scientific intricacies of food. Our team is also comprised specifically by the partners of the project we have. For example, for this specific challenge and technology, we partner with small companies and tech groups/individuals to co-generate this idea with those we trust and are transparent. Those we chose to work with have high ethic standards fostering that transparent collaboration and speak, write, and aim to strategically bring about joint-change. We have in field teams part of the community where we bring job opportunities and nutritious examples to replicate, moving forward with their insight and their leadership in the community, especially women and youth. 

Inequality, silos and discrimination is a lot that has gone wrong. In our core dedication is to reduce malnutrition, empower and bring people together through creativity and inclusion. In this light, diversity is the hear of it all. Have multiple backgrounds, points of view, a safe, courageous space to discuss our common ground on food we want, need and deserve, that take everyone into consideration, while being specific to all group needs and meeting them. Inspiring and impacting governance that touches on millions (with wider influence that we do, but we can move the needle into improved change). We work towards gender equity in order to equate and have that parity, with food being a messenger for so many other behavior change. If we bring people together, we do so through virtual platforms too, in unconventional ways: for example through art or NFT that regard food behaviors: naturalization of women breastfeeding, art connecting our three topics we merge with a storyline, involving artists (who don't necessarily work technically in food). Our goal is to connect them through up-skilling women in their ownership of land and entitlement of the production of food to meet to health needs (and the market's consumers one too afterwards) and soil regeneration. Doing so with incentives to reforest in creative ways, grow according to the acidity of soil, and even reduction of violence of women. The most important aspect of what we do, is that the community is part of our field team, with their input, M&E and insight. 

Solving an issue takes time and multiple people. If we were are overnight solvers, the world would be a better one. But we need to understand the complexity of so many push and pull factors that have made our world spin the way it has been. And SOLVE understands this. It really understands the social entrepreneurship vision, passion and also frustration we might get when our hopes are high and low when developing our idea. Sincerely, we work for humanity, but human beings are very stringent to work with. Yet, you find a community that keeps you motivated, supported and encourages to transform systems that have been unequal and power-based. I trust the work we have been doing, and especially in these two last year to be of extraordinary quality without being impossible to reach. Quite the contrary. We build it from the people horizontally, because we are all people within spaces. We have the scale of our ideas and solutions being possible, internationally recognized, and just last year to be really considered in our home country but local entities. You know that phrase: never a prophet in your own land? That is who we felt. But we are turning that point, and SOLVE is the next step in consolidating our effort to change and be resilient, from the basis of food production and consumption, while merging food, climate and rights with creativity, wit, and grit, including all to reduce inequality and bring forward the opportunities we all deserve. 

Our operations have grown exponentially over the last two years, we need a larger team to keeping up and developing products and services we offer in order to grow our funding (for the team, the projects, the goals and impact). We have been training and within accelerators, and our business model is one hybrid, and we are different from the traditional not-for-profit since we go beyond just assisting communities. However, with that, we do have project which the M&E is done by the community itself (when we offer employment to them, and even entrepreneur facilities in developing themselves nutritious foods to be sold within that community). In the financial part, we have a hired accountant, however, since our model is a hybrid one but registered as a not-for-profit, reaching out to impact investors may not always be on our side, and then we need to be more sustainable than just philanthropy and gran dependency. And we have so many products to be delivered with our message that traditional non-profits often to go about, and have a technology ready to be improved to connect education, women, crop production, with markets, health and economic empowerment. We also need to collect more data, from soil acidity, native plants, nutrition aspect, taste and mixes, culturally accepted foods and through technology develop a new supply of purposeful oriented foods for health with a Wa'ik experience.

I would love to partners with universities, think thanks, B Corps companies, companies that align with ending modern day slavery, those who promote good food for our health, that empower communities, youth, and to collaborate together in Central America, starting in Guatemala, to be part of the team, to be an open mind to create even a fund for non-profits that gather investor in social change. To be resilient goes a long way with funding opportunities, and grant competition can be attributed to those with better writing skills. Partners who perhaps even permit a "serendipity" line in financial budgets that goes in line with ethical and transparency, inspiring creativity and the unexpected. Thank you!

Mother earth, the divine femenine, the one who give life and birth. The one where our first food comes from, breastmilk with nutrients and qualities that no artificial manufactured food brand could ever pair up with. Women leaders are the backbone of a more just, caring and responsible future, and we need more responsible leaders and close the gender gap quicker and eliminate inequalties and forms of discrimination. I've recently been recognized and I am very humble as one of the 6 inspiring female in gender parity in publications in the World Economic Forum and in within the 5 female trailblazers fighting for gender equity. And all done through food and the value we bring to ourselves and others. 

I esteem incredibly much Minderoo Foundation because it inspired me to fight for ways to reduce modern day slavery. And food is a melting pot for that. It would be fantastic to follow this line, and merge it with aquatic food and opportunities for people and also life below water, especially starting with seaweed. 

We have a vision to capture carbon with reforesting land that have been swiped clean by hurricane in very vulnerable communities to plant native fruit trees for their food security and sovereignty, planting one tree with each gender abuse reported.

We have lost the sense of what humanity really is, and we question it. Artificial intelligence is perhaps needed to bring back our own intelligence and sense of logic and orientation to care for the planet and for us, from the basis of our food and our relation to those intertwined aspects we hold sacred. Bringing simple yet specific and purposeful education that is applicable in practice and not only theoretical is THE way to give so much back, since it not only enhanced your physical and cognitive wellbeing with being nourished, it up-skills and even leapfrogs in being ahead of the curve, closing income and inequality gaps. 

We would love to explore even more cryptoart with NFT to sense and naturalize the power of live foods (that is what I call the commonly known "perishable") and bring back the super power of breastfeeding displayed in art, storytelling, and counterbalancing the mainstream advertisement.