Education for 400 children in Guatemala

Formal classes continue in Guatemala where our scholarship students and members of the community will be planting hundreds of trees as part of our annual reforestation programme next week. They have already held litter-picking days around the communities taking the lead in educating the community on the advantages of a clean environment.

Extra classes have been held throughout the year to make sure all our students have caught up from the pandemic before final exams in the next few weeks. The curriculum they are studying is extremely varied including the traditional maths, sciences and languages to more vocational subjects like electronics.

Our scholarship programme has been extremely successful getting more teenagers and adults into further education with which they can secure better paid jobs which help put food on the table and pay for the extras needed for their siblings’ primary education.

Our sewing business continues with the single mothers, creating an income which they can use to pay for the education of their children and provide daily meals. Education and food – basic human rights which we are trying to uphold in the communities.

This year The Phoenix Projects are celebrating twenty years in Latin America and thanks to you around five thousand children, teenagers and adults have been able to receive a quality education during this time in Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Perú and previously in Brazil, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

We have built schools, extra classrooms, kitchens and energy efficient stoves, provided employment for dozens of local people, planted hundreds of thousands of trees, distributed educational materials, daily meals and hundreds of tonnes of fruit and implemented sustainable income plans on an average annual budget of around $100,000/£85,000.

Additionally, over three hundred families have benefitted from the implementation of sustainable income plans including cows, chickens, weaving, vegetables and small businesses.

To celebrate our 20^th Anniversary we are launching this year’s Appeal today and all donations up to $50/£40 will be matched at 50% by GlobalGiving from Monday 12th September - today - until Friday 16^th September. Larger donations can of course be made although the matching will only apply to the first $50/£40 and only once per individual donor.

We still have so much more we want to do over the coming years with the experience we have gained, including replicating the projects in other communities with sustainable plans covering running costs from the start.

Your continued support in helping to fund local teachers’ salaries and scholarships, school materials, food and sustainable income plans is as important now as it has been in the last twenty years.

We realise that times are uncertain though anything you can donate to the Appeal this week to take advantage of the 50% matching will help us start the next twenty years in the best possible way!

Thank you so much in advance.    

Cheers