Education for 500 children in Guatemala

The scholarship students have been involved in our annual reforestation programme planting hundreds of trees which helps offset Phoenix’s carbon footprint in all our countries. This includes daily transport our teachers take as well as flights taken for our charity challenges and the annual Impington school trip to Peru. Several more planting days will be undertaken as we aim to plant over two thousand trees each year.

All the children and families we support from different communities around the lake live in extreme poverty. They are unable to purchase even the simplest classroom materials, never mind the monthly costs of further education. Weeks are spent visiting different communities to identify the families in most need to make sure all our scholarships are awarded to the students who really need them. We currently help three hundred and fifty primary school students and one hundred secondary and college students. 

We are putting a lot of emphasis on a school for students with varying disabilities and seeing where we can help out on top of supplying school materials. Gaspar, our project manager, volunteers in the school at least once a week to get a feel for what we can do in the future. 

Construction of the new Plan Costura (sewing business) centre continues at pace with work now concentrated on the interior, including digging deep holes into the rock for the septic tank. Once finished the centre will provide training and work opportunities for dozens of women and teenagers.

Thank you so much for your continued support for our work in Guatemala, it truly does mean so much for the communities where we work.

I hope all is well. It has been a great few months on the projects and to make it even better, GlobalGiving will be matching all individual donations to this page up to $50 by 50% between today, Tuesday 25th March to Friday 28th March. It would be fantastic if you could donate and take advantage of this extra matching and thank you in advance. 

This year we will be supporting fifty students with disabilities in a small school on the lake. Each student will receive school materials which will ease the economic burden on their families. The school has very few teachers due to lack of governmental funding so Gaspar, our project manager, will also volunteer at the school as an assistant when he can. More schools have been identified over the past couple of months which we will support with classroom materials. Over time we will see what further help we can provide.

Our secondary school and college students are into their third month of classes. We are supporting one hundred students from several communities in secondary and college education. We are also supporting three hundred primary school students with materials so they remain in school rather than dropping out due to lack of school books and pencils. 

Work continues on the new centre for Plan Costura in one of our communities whilst meetings are held to start a new plan in another community which will provide opportunities for dozens of teenagers and mothers.

Many thanks for all your support for the projects and we’ll be in touch in the next couple of months with a further update.

Cheers