Glendy Paola Agustin Jíguan

The SDGs related to community well-being, the environment, and a just peace are all important to me. For me, community development goes hand in hand with balance and harmony with Father Cosmos, Mother Earth, and humanity. Life is respected because nobody owns anything: we are simply elements of a diverse fabric. Every action I take is aimed at respecting cultural identity and collective rights that protect the original peoples.

I look forward to seeing everyone exercising “good living,” or tb’anel chwinqlal. This is the Indigenous concept of no hunger, poverty, lack of water, contamination of Mother Earth, violence (especially against women, children, and human rights leaders), nor dispossession of land. Rather, there is peace and justice for everyone, and all the problems that threaten our life on Earth are in the past. Ten years is a very short amount of time in which to achieve this, but it is impossible to not to hear the voices that cry for a dignified life.

• Engage in opportunities for learning and participation so that you know the past of your people. For me in Guatemala, the stories of our past include invasion and colonization, internal armed conflict that left thousands dead, and the extinction of several languages. None of these stories were taught in school; I only learned about these things through participation in various Indigenous, community, and human rights organizations.
• Strengthen your technical and political capacities related to cultural identity so that you can share in processes of critical collective thinking.
• Consider reading as a strengthening activity and writing as a way of protecting life. Promote youth art to share wisdom through music, dance, painting, and crafts to new generations.
• Strengthen the leadership of young people in communities so that they can be agents of change from their places of origin.