Natik: We began the year with a board retreat in Santiago Atitlán!

Greetings and welcome to 2024!  We began the year with an in-person board retreat in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala over the MLK weekend. It was our first in-person meeting since January 2020, and the first time that we’ve met as a board outside of the United States. 

The ANADESA classroom hosted three 4-hour meetings on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The whiteboard was filled, photographed, and erased many times during each of the sessions! 

On Saturday morning, the four Santiago partners gave lively interactive presentations.  

On Sunday afternoon, the Puerta Abierta hosted an event for fifty people in the garden area of their “forever school” the day before the 2024 school year began. Natik Board members and team, and partner leadership and program participants played games, visited, and enjoyed Patín, a traditional all-in-one stew individually wrapped in banana leaves. 

Besides the fun of being together, the Sunday event included celebration of the 20th anniversary of Natik’s official 501(c)3 nonprofit affirmation letter from the IRS in January 2004. (Back when our name was the International Humanitarian Foundation.) 

The three days of formal and informal conversations were a reminder that there's just no substitute for being in the same place at the same time. 

Change the channel:

As a Natik supporter, we want you to know that are in the process of adjusting how we manage the monthly partner bulletins. For the past few years, we encouraged our partners' desire to communicate directly with their supporters through writing their monthly bulletins.  

However, being responsible for twelve blog-type essays a year often ended up being complicated and time-consuming for partner leadership. Therefore, we’re trying another way to facilitate ongoing communication throughout the year. 

From now on, partners will fill out profile forms for leaders, program participants, and a few indirect beneficiaries of their programs.  Natik will craft the monthly update stories based on the information shared. As always, we continue to experiment with ways to balance our collective desire to keep you informed --- ideally, through interesting stories --- without being overly burdensome for the partners. 

This new system will begin with the February partner bulletins. We’ll be testing this new method during the next several months and will be very interested in your reactions and recommendations.

Saludos,

✨💫✨Anita Smart

Executive Director