Maya-led, Community Driven

Natün Guatemala’s Journey – A Vision of Indigenous Leadership

When I was younger, I was drawn to international development – its enticing mix of humanity, politics and working with completely different cultures, sparking my youthful optimism about changing the world. Growing up in a rural seaside town in England, in a family of scientists, meant it wasn’t an obvious career choice – but I naturally gravitated towards events, information and academic and professional opportunities that took me further down this path. 

When I graduated university at the ripe age of 22, I jumped at a government-funded volunteer opportunity which placed me in Honduras. As a young, energetic and well-intentioned group of Brits abroad, we set to work on a project in a rural Honduran community. We had no experience, we didn’t speak Spanish, and, most importantly, we weren’t from the community. I learned the hard, but personally impactful way, that coming in from the outside, I wasn’t going to save anybody and my perspective is very different and hard to apply to the local context. I ended up being in Honduras for two years; a humbling experience which gave me a fast-tracked understanding of the power of local leadership. 

Fast forward to 2017, when I arrived in Guatemala and started working for Mayan Families.  I very quickly could see a lot of difficult challenges facing the organization, most notably a rupture of trust between us, the community, and donors, which ultimately meant that the impact of our work was limited. As we moved to a new chapter through setting up a new local partner and hiring new leadership in 2019, we knew that in order to right the ship, we had to do one huge thing to begin doing deeply impactful work: move to a sustainable, systemic-minded and community-led organization. 

As we made this shift, it was key to engage with staff, community, donors and board members to collectively develop a new vision for the organization. As we stepped into our new strategic plan based firmly around the Maya culture, we intentionally both hired incredible Indigenous leaders and worked on developing the huge leadership potential from within, shifting power in decision-making and developing an internal Indigenous leadership team. We set up clear and consistent mechanisms to listen to communities, build solid relationships with community leadership councils based on trust and consistency, and focus on collaborative long-term goals. In 2022, we changed our name to Natün, a word in Kaqchikel meaning “to come together / to unite”, a significant step which reflects our alignment with community values. 

When a project is developed without true community involvement and buy-in, it gets attached to the organization, instead of the community; so, when the organization leaves or can no longer sustain the project, the initiative dies. Real community leadership means that we collectively take responsibility, and projects exist beyond Natün while it is still relevant to the community, creating a truly sustainable model. 

Watching staff, relationships and trust grow and flourish together has been the highlight of my career so far, and I continue to learn from the team and community, every day. As Maya leaders have stepped into strategic positions and decision-making, our programs have blossomed into deeply impactful examples of culturally-relevant work, which engages with key actors and looks at the systemic roots of community challenges. Internally, we have shifted our organizational culture to embody Maya values, including a collaborative leadership model and centering Indigenous wisdom at the heart of all we do.

Through these shifts, I have watched Natün naturally become positioned within the local ecosystem as a trusted partner, now working alongside local government, Indigenous ancestral authorities, and other NGOs, being sought out to contribute as expert voices who are passionate about centering Maya culture and bridging gaps so that services work for Maya communities. 

Now, it feels like a natural evolution for Natün to move our executive leadership in line with these values, to fully center local expertise and take an even deeper step into community leadership. We are embracing a co-leadership model, where we will spilt the executive director position into two equal roles in a shared power structure: a local Indigenous leader will focus on the Guatemalan side, program and community strategies and actions; I will focus on the US side, international partnerships and fundraising, and we will collaboratively decide on some key overarching decisions in the middle. 

I know this is the right step for Natün, because, even more than we have already achieved, it will mean that everything we do is culturally-rooted and set up sustainably for long-term impact. It will strengthen trust and relationships both within the team and communities, and allow deeper understanding for decisions that work for local Indigenous people. It will bring challenges too – as international allies to Indigenous communities we have to be able to step back, give up power and know the limitations of how we can support, and, my new partner and I will surely need some mediation for conflict resolution and difficult decisions!

Supporters of Natün have a crucial role to play in this transition and our work going forward. Without such solid support and trust in us and our vision over the last 6 years as we have shifted our work and model, we could not have survived, let alone got to a place of thriving. It is because of the many incredible people sharing our passion and values that we are able to now take this next impactful step of local leadership, and we invite you to continue with us on this journey as we delve deeper into community-led work. 

Working with nonprofit organizations and in international development work can bring big challenges and ethical quandaries, and as a sector, we have a lot of hard questions to grapple with. But if my experience and my instincts are anything to go by, working to truly develop local leadership and leave power in the hands of communities is the path through which I can see a sustainable future, where we collectively can change the world.

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