Jasper woman changes lives in the slums of Guatemala 

Braving seedy neighbourhoods and putting her personal safety at risk, Jasperite Donnelly Hart travels to Guatemala each year from January to March sharing her home-economics skills.  

At the Jasper Legion on Dec. 10, Hart gave a powerpoint lecture over lunch entitled Project Alotenango, named for the city in Guatemala where she teaches cooking, sewing and agriculture to local women.  Attended by approximately 40 women and three men (myself included), the event was in part a fundraiser for Hart’s project.  

Dec. 10 marks the anniversary of International Human Rights Day, celebrating the inception of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the final day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.  

Running through the full spectrum of ages, this “lunch and learn” event provided an opportunity for Hart to explain why she got involved in this charity endeavour, her teaching philosophy for the women in Alotenango, as well as some of the hurdles that have been overcome enacting this teaching program.  

Hart’s approximately 40 minute-long talk was punctuated by the hard-life facts of subsistence living, but interspersed with a bit of humour as well.  “The women do most of the work,” said Hart, adding they collect firewood for cooking, which has become increasingly scarce around town due to depletion, so they must go farther and farther out to find wood.  

Hart’s generosity extended to providing micro-credit loans to women in the community who wanted to start a small business venture.  “Basically, if a group has some idea about how to make some money, I would extend a small little loan, they would take the loan and try their idea and then each week we would talk about what we could do to improve it, pay back the loan, reinvest the profit and learn to work together,” she said.  

Hart, who is a former sewing teacher takes two sewing machines down with her each year to expand the teaching program.  To ship them would be very expensive and they may not arrive, she said.  

Hart said she is uncomfortable with the attention she gets as the project has been “mostly a personal thing,” but because the costs of the program have gone up with expansion, going public has become “necessary, number one, and a wonderful thing,” she said.