Education for 400 children in Guatemala

Our school in Guatemala nears the mid-way point in the educational year with some excellent exam results. As the school becomes more and more sustainable we are looking to expand our work in different areas in Guatemala, including Lake Atitlán and the Dry Corridor where there is an extreme dearth of educational opportunities.

We always aim to use every cent of donation money as best we can and we feel that investing in local teachers can provide the best “bang for our buck”. Over the years we have seen the huge benefits of taking on local teachers as they are from the same environments as the children so understand the difficulties though also are actual living proof that it is possible no matter your background – they are fantastic role models.

Over the next five years we aim to continue investing in family sustainable income plans which help cover the costs of further education, medical costs and of course income for food for the whole family. Some of the income will go towards covering the projects’ costs too as we aim to increase our work in all the countries! Examples of successful plans include Plan Moo (cows), Plan Huerto (vegetable gardens), Plan Pollo (chickens) and Plan Negocio (small businesses). Hundreds of families have benefited from the plans over the past few years and we plan to triple this numbers over the next few years.

We completed our two Charity Challenges for all our projects in the past couple of weeks, completing the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in Perú followed by climbing volcanoes in Ecuador, each a week long. We managed to raise some fantastic funds for the projects and will be repeating the challenges next year with the Perú challenge in the week of 25^th May and Ecuador in the week of 1^st June 2020. If you are interested in joining us please do contact me on dom@thephoenixprojects.org and it will be great to have you on board!

Thank you and all the best for the next few months and let us know if you are interested in joining us on the Charity Challenges next year in Ecuador and Perú!

Cheers

I hope all is well with you. We’re almost at the end of the first quarter of 2019; time is flying by! We are now in the second phase of our 25-year cycle; 1) introducing education, 2) introducing sustainable plans to help cover costs of the projects whilst continuing to cover the costs through donations and 3) with the projects sustainable we will concentrate on employment generation for the graduates.

For many years we have introduced education to hundreds of children and seen them continue from primary school, through secondary school and college so for us now to be in the stage where are adding in sustainable plans whilst continuing to cover costs is a huge advance from when we started. Thank you to you all for helping us get this far and for continuing to support us in the future.

It is Charity Challenge season once again and we will be heading to Perú and Ecuador in May to raise funds for all our projects so please do support the challenge by donating to this page.

Our school got off to a great start in Itzapa with all eight grades of classrooms full and being taught by our local teachers, most of whom came through the system with us from the start (phase 1!). Just the other day we bumped into two of our female students who started with us back in the early 2000’s and who we managed to get experience with a local accountancy firm a few years back: they are both now formally employed with that firm, earning critical income for their families back in the community.

As Guatemala was our first country we are well into the second phase of the cycle with the community taking more control and decision making of the day-to-day running of the school which is essential for future sustainability.

Thank you and all the best for the next few months and we will update you on the goings on, especially the Perú and Ecuador challenges!

Cheers