Break the Chains of Slavery

The Chávez family live on the outskirts of Antigua. They are a family that survives on the generosity of others as they do not have enough to manage by themselves. Currently they are living in a house that has been lent to them without charge for one year. They have until the end of the year before they are back on the streets.

The family consists of Catalina*, 27, and her three children, Frances*, Elijah* and Alex*. Catalina is originally from a town called Nebaj in the Quiché department in the western highlands of Guatemala. Nebaj is one of three towns in the Ixil region, so-called because the people are of Ixil descent. Ixil is a language spoken by around 120,000 people in Guatemala and parts of Mexico. Catalina and her family moved to Antigua when she was 1 year old to find better opportunities.

At first, the family made money by selling newspapers, before starting to sell sweets and bubbles. Catalina helped when she was a child, before being married off to her husband. The family did not have enough to survive and so decided to sell Catalina’s hand in marriage to support themselves. Catalina was married to a man from her hometown and returned there to start a family. Frances and Elijah were born in Quiché. Two years ago, Catalina was finally able to separate from her abusive husband and returned to Antigua once again looking for a better life. Whilst she asks her ex-husband for help to look after her children, she has never received any child support.

Currently, Catalina works in the Antigua Central Park selling sweets. Frances and Elijah often also sell in Central Park to support their mother. The family earns around Q800 ($107) a month.

Last year, Frances took part in our CAIPETI programme to take children off the streets and into school. She was not studying last year but was inspired by the classes to start this year at school. Currently, Frances and Elijah are both studying in school, though this is their first year and they are a few years behind. They find it difficult to learn in school due to the language barrier. Whilst they speak some Spanish, they find it much easier to understand and communicate in their own language.

Both Frances and Elijah have been added to our Scholarship and Sponsorship Programme this year to support them in their studies. They, like the other 211 children in the Programme, will receive monetary support when they bring us their grades and can use the money to further support their education. By being in school they have a better chance at a future and a way to support themselves. We believe that the scholarship cheque will encourage the children to stay in school. The children are also enrolled in our Reforzamiento Programme to help them with homework and to try and fill in the gaps in their learning.

Recently, we also supported the family with a new bunkbed, meaning that Frances and Elijah will have their own bed to sleep in for the first time in their lives. They were delighted with their new beds and couldn’t wait to try them out.

When asked what they want to be in the future, both Frances and Elijah told us they would like to be cleaners. Catalina has higher hopes for her children, however, hoping that they can become lawyers or graduates in the future. She wants them to have the opportunities that she never had. With the support of the GOD'S CHILD Project, the family will not have to sell their children's hand in marriage ever again.

The GOD’S CHILD Project and ITEMP have been working for 30 years to break the chains of poverty and slavery through education, housing and healthcare as well as direct intervention. Please click the link below to donate to support us in our ongoing mission.

At Asociación Nuestros Ahijados and The GOD'S CHILD Project our mission is to reduce the gaps of extreme poverty in vulnerable and excluded populations and to guarantee equal development opportunities. We do this through programmes in food and nutritional security, in secondary, technical, and vocational education, in healthcare and child nutritional recovery, in housing, and in economic and social empowerment of women and their families. We therefore fight human trafficking through long-term solutions to the causes in Guatemala, India and the United States.

During the last 10 years we have mobilised more than 200 women living in poverty and social exclusion to establish our Mothers’ Club. This allows them to have access to information and training for their social empowerment and works towards the prevention of violence against women, giving knowledge of their human rights. They also have the opportunity to have access to food and vegetables once a week for their families.

Before the pandemic we had around 200 mothers enrolled in our Mothers’ Club. During and after the pandemic that number rose to around 400. There has been a notable increase in the number of people looking for support as a direct result of the COVID pandemic.

As of 2023, with the objective of strengthening our institutional strategy, the Mothers' Club has been transformed into a development programme called Economic and Social Empowerment for Women and their Families, which will have the objective of providing economic autonomy for women so that they can enjoy equal access and control over economic resources and the same opportunities as men, in order to make their own decisions in all areas of their lives.

The focus of this formation and training is to create financially independent and stable women to empower them to live independently. We are working to plan and prepare for these courses through training for our staff, collaborations with other organisations and fundraising. We want to increase the number of beneficiaries from the current 400 to over 700 women, all of whom are specifically interested in becoming financially and personally independent and empowered.

We also want to ensure that our mothers and their families have food security, as this is a major part of being able to work and succeed independently. As such, our weekly vegetable distributions will continue during the planning process and implementation of the new project. We will also be looking at sexual and reproductive health to allow our mothers to create and follow through with their life plans.

We hope that through our Economic & Social Empowerment programme we can transform to break the cycles of poverty and gender inequality here in Guatemala. By creating empowered, independent and food secure women we can fight the causes of human trafficking.

At Asociación Nuestros Ahijados and The GOD'S CHILD Project we work to break the chains of slavery through long-term solutions to the causes. By helping people in vulnerable situations we can ensure that they do not need to make desperate attempts which could lead the them becoming victims of slavery or trafficking in the future.

One of our approaches is through the building of secure housing for families in Guatemala. This year we have built 26 new houses for families in need, giving them somewhere that they can call a home.

One such family that received a house from us this year was the Pérez* family. This young family of five were living in a single room made of canes with a dirt floor in Aldea Chitaburuy, Parramos. The house was separated by a wardrobe to create two small living spaces. The house is isolated, and the family have to cross a river just to get to the nearest shop to buy food.

The children’s mother cooked on the patio outside, next to the toilet and shower. The family lacked a formal kitchen and did not always have water and electricity in the house. The children’s father works in agriculture on a small farm, but he earns too little to buy the materials needed to build a house for his growing family. Other, better-paid work is too difficult to come by. The parents want to give their children better opportunities in life, starting with improved living conditions, especially now the rainy season has arrived and their current house is getting very cold at night.

Thankfully, Asociación Nuestros Ahijados was able to provide just that for the family. Our staff members and volunteers, including our own Founder and Executive Director Patrick Atkinson and our National Director, Miguel Angel Alvarez, worked for two long days to build a secure and dignified home for the family. After three days of extremely hard work, the family was delighted to receive a new home and kitchen. Not only that, but the family also received a new stove and water filter from us.

The family is now no longer thinking of ways to escape their current life or putting themselves or their children at risk. They are overjoyed at their new house and extremely grateful to the Project for the support.

The GOD’S CHILD Project and ITEMP have been working for 30 years to break the chains of poverty and slavery through education, housing and healthcare as well as direct intervention. Please click the link below to donate to support us in our ongoing mission.

In November 2021, we collaborated with Guatemala’s Ministerio de Trabajo to form a new programme called CAIPETI (Centro de Atención Integral en Prevención y Erradicación del Trabajo Infantil). The goal of this programme is to begin to eradicate child labour in Antigua Guatemala through education.

The 25 children, who our social workers had identified as vulnerable due to working in the streets of Antigua, come to the Project every Friday morning to receive classes from our teachers. These are designed to empower the children as well as give them useful skills that they will be able to use in the future. Many of the children did not previously go to school when they were younger, and need to catch up the learning that they previously missed.

After receiving their classes, the children also pass through our weekly vegetable distribution and receive bags of vegetables, fruit and pizza. They can take this home to their families, meaning that they don’t have to work as much to pay for the family’s food.

One of the children in the programme is 14-year-old John. He lives with his parents and seven siblings in San Anton, on the outskirts of Antigua. John’s parents were just 13 and 12 years old when they had their first child, John’s older brother, and 16 and 15 when they had John. The family is from Momostenango, around 3 and a half hours away from Antigua, and moved to Antigua to try and find a better life. They are just one of many families who take part in internal migration in Guatemala.

The family has just one bed for all 10 of them to share, and so John and many of his siblings sleep on the floor. Their house is rented and consists of two rooms made of cement blocks and sheet metal, although the family does not have enough possessions to make use of both rooms. The landlord only allows the family to have electricity for four hours a day. This week, in addition to supporting John and his brother Presley through CAIPETI, we are giving the family a new bed and some solar lamps so that they can live more comfortably.

There are positives for John and his family, however. As a result of joining CAIPETI, John enrolled in school for 2022 and is in 4^th grade. Four of his younger siblings are also studying this year, with the rest not yet old enough to start school. John and his brother have gained a newfound love for studying, and have now got dreams for the future where they can better support their family. We hope to continue to be a part of that.

The GOD’S CHILD Project and ITEMP have been working for over 30 years to break the chains of poverty and slavery through education, housing and healthcare as well as direct intervention. Please click the link below to donate to support us in our ongoing mission.

At Casa Jackson on the 20^th of January we had a new visitor. 1-year-old Alejandra arrived severely malnourished and in desperate need of the medicine and nutrition we provide to help our most vulnerable baby-patients to recover.

At first it seemed that Alejandra’s case was a case similar to many others that we have in Casa Jackson. She was referred by the health centre of Escuintla and was due to arrive with her mother, María. When they arrived, however, we realised that Alejandra’s and her mother’s case was very different indeed.

María arrived at Casa Jackson aged just 15 years old, far too young to be a mother. Instead of playing with dolls she has a real life baby to look after. She was accompanied by her grandmother who told us that the father of María’s baby is María’s own stepfather, who had abused María on numerous occasions. María’s mother, instead of protecting her daughter, had decided that she wanted to continue living with her husband and left María and Alejandra in the care of their grandmother.

In Guatemala the abuse and rape of some minors is an all-too-real fact of life. The people who carry out these disgusting actions should rightly be pursued by the law, but unfortunately that often does not come to pass. It was María’s mother who needed to file an official complaint in this case but she decided not to in order to protect her husband. Not only did this leave María unprotected but also meant that other young girls in the area where the family live do not know the risk that they might be under.

María’s grandmother told us that eventually she had filed the complaint with the PGN (Guatemalan Social Services) but was yet to hear a response. Asociación Nuestros Ahijados will be taking on the case through our legal department to pursue the people involved to the full extent of the law. We will continue to work for the most vulnerable members of our Guatemalan society and do our all to protect the children who are most at-risk.

The GOD’S CHILD Project and ITEMP have been working for 30 years to break the chains of poverty and slavery through education, housing and healthcare as well as direct intervention. Please click the link below to donate to support us in our ongoing mission.