Mayan Power and Light

One month ago today, Volcan Fuego erupted - taking more than 112 lives and displacing 12,000 more.

Poor emergency response procedures by government agencies spurred communities to self-organize their evacuation centers and demand resettlement assistance. This fight is due to last a long time as survivors remain crowded in schools, gyms and churches.

To lend our hand, ATC staff was directed towards relief efforts - communicating with leaders and organizations near ground zero to learn where we can help. 

Our empowerment field staff visited several evacuation shelters and surviving villages to interview leaders about community needs. They said they have stockpiled clothes, food and water that arrived from the generosity of strangers, but that the flow of donations has slowed considerably and is not expected to continue.  Men in the shelters must return to the volcano to fetch firewood for cooking in their city shelters. Donated drinking water will soon run out. People in surviving villages are cut off from electricity and water quality has deteriorated since the eruption. 

Through our Mayan Power and Light program, we have water filters, solar lamps and even fuel-saving stoves that could benefit the shelters. SEA, our women-owned social enterprise, has donated lamps and staff to assist in relief efforts. 

Thanks to the many donors to our Globalgiving Guatemala Volcano Emergency project, 200 water filters and 57 solar lamps are ready to be distributed next week. 

To ensure the filters are used well, our empowerment staff will be piloting our new Mayan Power and Light curriculum with a half-day training on family health and sanitation including the importance of water filtration and smoke reduction in the home. Water filters and sanitation training will reduce the spread of parasites and viruses in the shelters where up to 8 families are sharing a room. 

68 kids at the elementary school of Nueva San Jose, San Lucas Toliman, Solola celebrated the arrival of the school's first computers this Friday.

In 2016, we installed a small solar power backup system at the school to assist with the frequent blackouts. Now, this clean energy is powering the laptops that bring modern education to the rural poor. 

Nueva San Jose school has been operating for 9 years in a building that used to be a chicken hatchery, converted into 4 classrooms with a small covered area for play. Looking out into the street, you see open drains flowing with gray water and houses made from sheet metal. 

The parents of the school children are day laborers at the nearby coffee plantation or at the dairy factory - where many people work 14 hour shifts. We have seen that in many families, there will be one child to receive extra resources for high school education in hopes they will support the rest of the family with their professional salaries.  These gifted children have a lot of pressure on them to succeed, but lack the tools to assist them.

One basic and invaluable tool these children lack is access to a computer. Many had never even seen one up close before. Without learning to operate a computer, to type or to search the web, Nueva San Jose children are entering high school with a severe disadvantage. Without basic training in computers like their peers, the community's dreams of breaking out of poverty will continue to be hampered. 

In the last 6 months, 23 people sent used laptops to our Michigan office.  You, our Globalgiving supporters, funded the shipping and computer reprogramming to a Spanish operating system.

Thanks to you, second-hand computer labs are making technology available to people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, creating opportunity for dignified work.