School Meals for Indigenous Children in Guatemala

Dear donor

It is our great pleasure to be able to thank you for your extremely generous support over the last few years and to inform you that thanks to your tireless contributions, the food program in our school at Lake Atitlán can now come to an end. The government has intervened finally and now provides daily foodstuffs for the children, and for this reason, we no longer require donations. It is so good that the population can now take their lives into their own hands which is fantastic, when it comes to providing daily school meals for the children.

With this daily food, it has improved child health, concentration levels, school attendance, education and the general potential of the children, all of which are so important.

Many thanks again for all of your support over the years; we really cannot thank you enough for your generosity, you can see the difference that your contributions have made.

We have managed to keep our food and fruit program going in Guatemala, providing fresh fruit and breakfast to over 500 children on a daily basis. When you look at the bigger picture, that is over 125,000 pieces of fruit a year that we rely on funding – which is a great deal, although the benefits far outweigh the financial burden! We have also added into the scheme daily fresh water as well, so that the children have access to drinking water, which is something that they do not have at home; usually they drink from a communal tap, or from water collected from central depots.

Through all of your generous donations we aim to make this sustainable, so that the children get clean drinking water like they deserve. The difference that just a few donations can make to this project is huge – it is obvious so see the benefits to all of these children.

We thank you all!

Many children in these communities do not have a balanced diet and recent studies show that Guatemala is on a par with Haiti as the the country with the worst child malnutrition in Latin America. 

 Our food programs continue daily in Guatemala, with fruit and breakfasts. We are seeing the children benefit from receiving their daily dose of vitamin C and also more energy in the morning for the classes ahead. During the year, thanks to generous donations, we will distribute close to 150,000 fruits, which not only benefits the children’s health, though also the local economy where we source the product. 

We are entering planting season for the crops of 2012 so fingers crossed it isn’t a repeat of the past three years, where the yield was next to zero. 

In March of 2012, 15 challengers headed off on a three day challenge to raise funds and awareness for our projects in Guatemala. The challenge included hiking to the highest peak, biking and kayaking Lake Atitlán. Not an easy task for our challengers. But they want to make a difference in these children's lives. 

Funds raised from this challenge go towards our food and fruit programs in Guatemala, especially important following years of failed crops. Food is invaluable for these school children. Happy tummies equals happy education.  

We would like to share the most recent trustee report from the GVI Charitable Trust. This report covers the six month period from July to December 2011.

This has been by far the most successful period. In six months we have raised nearly as much as we did the whole previous year. This increase in funding has brought a corresponding increase in the impact we have been able to create on our programs around the world.

During this period we have invested in sustainable education across Latin America. This includes support for the elderly in Guatemala and income generation schemes to support education in Honduras and Ecuador. In Mexico we have worked with a community to establish a recycling centre and in Kenya our partners in Mombasa will now see impoverished students complete primary education to earn qualifications for the first time.

These are just a few highlights of an amazing, productive and rewarding six months. Thank you to everyone who has supported us and played a crucial role in these achievements.

• GVI Charitable Trust Annual Report (PDF)