Adding More Members to the Tz'utujil Tziij Facebook Group

Rising Voices Grantee Project Update

Sotaay

Since the Rising Voices project has started, the process to publish in Mayan languages in the Facebook group Tz'utujil Tziij has improved. During the month of July there has been increased interaction from the participants, who have been sharing their thoughts in the Maya language.

Initially the only members that interacted in the group were users from the town of San Juan La Laguna, but it was a low participation rate from the 150 persons that were members. However, other members started to join from nearby towns such as San Pedro La Laguna, San Pablo La Laguna, and Santiago Atitlán, who also started to share their ideas and daily thoughts. We are now more than 400 members as part of the group.

Something interesting is that despite the differences in dialects that exist within the communities, the participants understand one another and communicate.

During the month of July, the users started to share photographs of insects and among the members of the groups, they started to ask about the name of the insects in the Mayan language. In the comments, the participants collaborated to identify the names of the insects. In the photo above, the user asks:

¿Naq ruub'ii’ awa’ ja jun juut ri?

What is the name of this worm?

Many other users also ask about how to translate a word from Spanish to the Mayan language. With the collaboration of all, we try to help others.

También muchos usuarios que escriben para preguntar sobre la traducción de alguna palabra en español al idioma maya. Con la colaboración de todos siempre se ha logrado ayudar a los demás.

So that the youth from the communities can have access to the internet, we visited different internet cafés to negotiate with their owners in order to find a way for the youth to use the internet where they can participate more actively. This has allowed the group to interact better and more people are joining the group.

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