Murray resident visits Bolivia to help women

Many people talk about wanting to help end world poverty, but few people do anything about it. Murray resident Abby Brass decided she wanted to do something. Brass, 23, is currently working on her master’s degree in international affairs and global enterprise at the University of Utah. As part of her program, she needed to fulfill an international internship.

Brass was selected to travel the Altiplano region of Bolivia, near La Paz, as part of a Choice Humanitarian project. The Choice Humanitarian organization creates, builds and supports women’s self-reliance programs in several different countries, including Kenya, Bolivia and Guatemala. Brass’s 10-week experience working with women in Bolivia gave her a taste of what it would be like to help women in other countries around the world.

“[These women] make the best of their lives, even with what little they have,” Brass said. “These opportunities bring income they use to buy food for their families.”

The Choice Humanitarian volunteers help women in impoverished areas find or develop a marketable skill such as weaving. The women are then tutored in how to design saleable items that are up to American standards and styles. Volunteers provide business consultations with these women and teach them how to run a business, market a product and get results.

Brass visited rural areas of Bolivia once or twice a week during her stay, and was amazed by the amount of kindness and generosity the people expressed, even though they had very little.

“A lot of these women have no husband and are the sole provider for their children,” Brass said. “It’s a really poor country. They have to do without a lot of the things we have.”

Although Brass said her language skills weren’t strong enough to have lengthy conversations with the people she helped in the program (especially since there are so many tribal dialects), she said it was easy to adopt a form of communication using smiles and hand gestures.

Part of her experience involved creating an energy/cereal bar using local grains, including quinoa and amaranth. Because energy bars are not part of the local diet, Brass experimented with various products, including peanuts, raisins and honey, to create a bar that could be sold locally and exported to places around the world.

Brass faced a challenge when writing up business plans for the production and distribution of the weaving products and energy bars, since the plans had to be written in Spanish. But, overall, she felt her experience was worthwhile—and she would love to return, or visit another country to help further women’s independence through micro-enterprise.

“We weren’t able to see a lot of results while we were there, so we didn’t see results first-hand,” Brass said. “But these women knit their scarves, and sell their scarves, and it provides enough money so they don’t have to worry about feeding their families.”