Homes for Homeless Families in Guatemala

June and July have been very busy months for us here at Nuestros Ahijados, especially for our house building programme. Over the past two months we have been visited by 8 Service Teams, all extremely ready and excited to help in our mission to provide for people in desperate need of a home.

Our social workers regularly receive requests for houses, and organise visits in the villages and towns around Antigua Guatemala to see which families have the greatest need. Over the past two months we have built 14 houses in various locations around Antigua, including San Juan Alotenango, San Lorenzo El Cubo and Pastores. This brings the total number of houses for this year up to 23.

In many of the houses we have also donated stoves, beds and water filters to the families to ensure that the family had access to clean drinking water and were safe from smoke inside their houses. They also now no longer have to sleep on a dirt floor. Some families also received a separate kitchen this month.

One of the families that received a house in July was the Astun Shoc family. They family has been known to the Project for a number of years as we have been helping the oldest child, Fausto, with physical therapy and medical treatment. Fausto has a delay in his neurodevelopment, with partial paralysis in his legs and hands, as a result of perinatal asphyxia and is unable to walk without the use of a walker. Thanks to donations we have been able to help him with medical appointments, new walking equipment and physical therapy. We also saw the need of the family as a whole and have provided them with water filters and an economical stove before building them a house.

The family consists of mother, Karen (24), Fausto (10) and his little sister Daniela (5), although they live on the same land as their grandmother, Eva, and their uncles, aunts and cousins. It is often Eva who has to take care of the children whilst Karen goes to work in a boutique shop. Karen earns just Q850 ($113) a month to support her children.

One of our brilliant service teams, Benilde-St Margaret’s Service Team, who were on their 7^th mission with the GOD’S CHILD Project, travelled down to Guatemala to help Fausto and his family as one of the three houses they built. It took three days of hard work to build the family their house, as well as a fourth day to build the family a kitchen. The family was extremely grateful for their house and couldn’t wait to move in. Their quality of life has drastically improved with this new house, and hopefully so too will the health of Fausto.

All 14 families who have received a house in the past two months are extremely grateful for the generosity, love and hard work by the service teams and people who support the house building programme. Their lives have improved and they now have a better chance of a brighter future.

The GOD’S CHILD Project has been working for 30 years to break the chains of poverty through education, housing and healthcare. Please click the link below to donate and support us in our ongoing mission.