Susana Arrechea, Princess of Girona Award winner: “Some people prefer to be without electricity than to have women lead the project”

A deep environmental awareness and the stubbornness to pursue impossible goals have been decisive for the future of Susana Arrechea (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 36 years old). “I grew up surrounded by forests and, when I was a teenager, they had cut down all the trees and built houses with drains that went directly to the rivers. I needed to dedicate myself to something related to the environment,” she recalls. After passing through the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, the University of Castilla La Mancha and the University of California in Berkeley, this chemical engineer and doctor in nanotechnology decided to break away from research, academicism and a future wedding, and fall in love again: “I got involved in New Sun Road, the company that brings light to rural areas of Asia and Africa, co-founded by my now husband,” she explains. A few years later, Arrechea founded New Sun Road Guatemalathe project for which she has just received the international Princess of Girona Award.

“We install electricity and internet in rural indigenous villages in Guatemala, with the condition that women lead the project, that they are the ones who manage and direct the connection service,” says Arrechea. Since 2019, the company has provided more than 14,000 digital services, benefiting up to 4,000 people, and moving forward on a path that has not always been rosy. “Most of our problems stem from the fact that the project is led by women. Several villages have preferred to remain without connection rather than have women work in the service, earn money and independence,” she stresses.

When New Sun Road Guatemala arrives in a community, they call an assembly so that the residents can decide if they want the project. If they accept it, the women of the village form committees of leaders and receive courses in technological skills. “We create a digital café where people go who need to surf the Internet, do online paperwork, download or print documents… And the leaders are the ones who manage all these services,” Arrechea points out. The idea is that the cafés will be the means for women to have their own income and participate in decision-making. “The contrast is incredible in some villages where women are not able to look a man in the eye and, after the training, you see how they act and see themselves as leaders. They feel useful and recognized by their environment,” she observes.

Arrechea insists that the economic and technological effects of New Sun Road Guatemala are enormous for the village, but the greatest impact is the social one: “The project is changing the self-perception of women and the mentality of their families and neighbours. We cannot change their situation in isolation, the social transformation includes families, especially husbands with whom we work on positive masculinities,” she says. “We make them aware of the division of tasks, making it clear to them that a man can also change a diaper.” And, despite the negative comments or views, Arrechea celebrates that, in the vast majority of cases, the reflections are positive. “It is very interesting to see how they adopt this new perspective naturally,” she says.

She also explains that “our approach is not Western, we respect the Mayan worldview and knowledge. Electricity and the Internet allow them to learn but also to transfer their wisdom to the world.” The trainings are given by indigenous women with a certain recognition in the native language of each town. “In Guatemala there are 22 Mayan languages. It is important for women to establish a connection with someone who speaks their language and shares their ethnicity,” she explains.

“Digital cafes” or internet access points have opened the door to new tools such as online commerce, GPT Chat for writing bureaucratic documents or making a CV… The uses are endless but so are the drawbacks and dangers. The neighbours receive talks on cybersecurity, privacy, cyberbullying, abuse of women, information management: “I think that young people in urban areas know the importance of good communication management, but in these communities it is essential to talk about the new world of deception and abuse that opens up with the internet connection and that they begin to use it in a controlled manner: without sharing passwords or intimate photographs, or trusting the identity of the person speaking.

With the Princess of Girona Award in one hand and a great ambition in the other, Arrechea is sure that she will continue to move forward, but with more calm, towards the next professional horizon: “Now I am calmer. I am the mother of two little girls that I don’t want to miss and it fills me to feel that I am serving my country, even though I don’t live there. This project educates me constantly, with it I have learned the capacity that the new generations have to change dinosaur mentalities,” she concludes.

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