The COVID-19 pandemic is making its mark in Guatemala. With still a low number of active cases, the President issued an order to close everything including our school with exceptions for essential government services, food production, supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations. Our efforts to help keep this number low are outlined below. Your support will go directly to support the communities of our children and families who are most at risk in a country where the health system can barely cope
The challenge for us is two-fold: 1) Should the virus get a foothold in the vastly impoverished villages of Guatemala, the loss of life will be catastrophic. Compounding that, a major infection here could create millions of orphans. In families suffering from generational poverty, it is often a grandparent who raises their grandchildren. 2) The second issue is that since our school had to close from order of the president, our children will not have access to a nutritious meal.
1. The expansion of our existing food basket program will keep our children fed since they primarily only eat a nutritious meal when they come to our school. 2. These food baskets will include face masks and hand sanitizer which are being made from locally sourced materials, helping to slow the spread of COVID in our communities. 3. We will also distribute easy-to-understand flyers so that our communities know how to stave off the spread of the COVID virus.
Our grassroots response is teaching Guatemalans how to take responsibility for their own future. As we saw in 2018 with your support that allowed us to respond to the volcanic eruption, Guatemalans when empowered to find lasting solutions to their problems can do just that. In the case of this situation, our initial and on-going response will foster a deep sense of community awareness and create the ability to ramp up an efficient response, not only to CORVID, but any future pandemics.
