The challenge for Always has forever been to empower women, in this case, our specific objective was to empower indigineous women in Mexico by finding a way to take on the leading cause of death in indigineous comunitties which is cervical cancer. The execution went out as planned and now these women that used to have no words to name their feminine reproductive system have a book filled with words so they can know their body and be able to communicate effectiveley with doctors to diagnose and treat this serious illness, therefore, empower their lives.

Once we knew cervical cancer was the leading cause of death in indigineous communities, we took on the task to find a place where we could effectively create the missing words for the feminine reproductivo system.

We chose San Bartolomé Quilana, Oaxaca because there we were able to team up with sociologists, doctors, linguists and people from the village to create the missing words for women’s reproductive system in Zapoteco.

It took a whole weekend talking to this group of people to understand not only the women, but also how not having the words is truley a barrier in their lives.

After understanding their culture, we assembled sociologists, doctors, linguists and people from the village and succesfully created words in their dialect that actually made sense to them and will be able to use them in their everyday lives from now on.

The results were outstanding for everyone.

Sociologists and linguists were able to put their knowledge to the test and share valueable information for us to understand the community and witness the preservation of a dialect. In the case of doctors, they finally have these words as tools to prevent and treat cervical cancer, and as a book was hended out with the words they will be able to explain to more Zapoteco-language speaking communities the new words.

The impact was huge all over the country because of such a positive action that truley benefits the lives of these indigineous women.