Empowering women and girls in Mexico

In Mexico, hunger and inequality are deeply connected; and both fall hardest on women and girls. In Indigenous communities across Chiapas and Oaxaca, girls face forced marriage before they can finish school, while women are locked out of the food security and economic opportunities, leading to hunger and poverty. 

Eat Well works with Indigenous women, building food sovereignty through traditional farming, nutrition knowledge, and community leadership that becomes self-sustaining long after the program ends.

Ellas Deciden works with adolescent girls, building the confidence, knowledge, and community support they need to stay in school, resist early marriage, and claim their own futures.

When women and girls are free to decide, communities nourish themselves and the cycle of hunger is broken.

Liliana grows her own vegetables in the highlands of Chiapas, reignited with knowledge shared by Indigenous women in the community, through the Eat Well program, generously supported by Guzman y Gomez.

Today, 187 Indigenous women are leading community gardens, raising tilapia fish for protein and sale, selling produce at local markets as well as homemade products such as aloe vera shampoo and soap, and passing traditional food knowledge to the next generation.

Diets have diversified, malnutrition has reduced and 46 trained community leaders are now teaching hundreds more in growing their own food.

Claudia is twelve years old and wants to be a lawyer. In Chiapas and Oaxaca, where at least 27% of girls marry before 18 and 92% have their education stopped once they’re married, that dream is fragile without the right support.

Ellas Deciden (She Decides) is a community-led program where Indigenous girls define the barriers they face, build safe spaces together, and take their voices all the way to policy makers. Her future is built on her terms.