The Methodist Women’s Federation: Justa Saravia
Justa Saravia is a product of the Methodist Church in Bolivia, the Methodist Women’s Federation, and the Advance project “Women’s Enrichment Program.”
Like most Andean women, she was raised in a small, rural agricultural community on the high plains of Bolivia. She started working as a child, taking care of animals and the land. Being an indigenous woman and poor, she was only able to finish the third grade.
When she married as a young woman, she and her husband migrated, along with others in her church, to more productive land lower in the Andes, close to the Amazon Basin, searching for new hope and new life. There they raised a family of three children. However, amidst the hard work in the tropical climate along with poor nutrition, her husband came down with TB, and they had to return to the high plains where they grew up.
Back in their community of Catacora, Justa started working the land and taking care of the animals herself until her husband recuperated enough to help again. Justa herself found the herbs that cured her husband’s illness.
Her participation in the local church and women’s society had a great impact on her life. Her training as a leader came from her involvement in the church and especially through the local women’s society. Over the years, her church and women’s society have provided training through literacy workshops, Bible studies, church and community leadership workshops, civil rights workshops for indigenous women, handicraft training, comprehensive health and herbal medicine training, and workshops in agricultural and livestock improvement methods.
Her participation in leadership grew in both the church and her community. Justa assumed positions that included president of her local women’s society, local church treasurer and lay pastor, district coordinator of the Women’s Federation, and president of the national Methodist Women’s Federation. This leadership training also served her as a community leader, where she has served as president of her local handicraft cooperative. Today, she serves on the governing board of her local community. This strength and leadership has served her to help herself, her family, and her community.
In her community, she helped in establishing a cooperative of greenhouses which now produces vegetables for their own families, with enough extra to sell in the city markets and to surrounding hotels. She also helped establish a local group of artisans working with traditional looms that work with sheep and alpaca wool. She has been a leader in marketing this community production to her local area and now to international markets, making connections through different organizations, including her national Methodist Women’s Federation.
A sign of the impact of her leadership is her three children. All have finished high school. The oldest went on to study handicraft production, the second has gone on to the Normal School to be a rural teacher, and the third is currently studying languages at the university so she can market internationally what her community cooperative produces.
