Homes for Homeless Families in Guatemala

So far this year, we have built 31 houses to provide safe and dignified homes for our families and there are more that we will build next week.

One of the families that has received a home from us this year is the Gutierrez family who live in Santa Ana. Their process to receive a house was slightly different from other families, as we approached them rather than them approaching us.

To decide who we are going to build for we have a small committee of staff from different programmes who visit candidates to ascertain if they qualify or not. These visits are based on the requests that we receive from people who come to the office to ask for a house build. Our committee visits the areas and decides if the houses qualify or not before presenting to leadership to organise the priority list.

We are conscious, however, that there are many families who are unaware of the service we provide and so do not know that they could receive a home from us. When our committee is visiting houses on the list, we also look out for other houses that qualify and invite them to apply.

We did this with the Gutierrez family. They were not on our list but, as we passed by their house, it stood out to us as a home that needed help. We knocked the door and there was Gladys. When we introduced ourselves and explained to her what we do, she agreed to show us her humble abode. We also met Gladys’s two sons, Angel and José, who were very sociable and enthusiastic to show us around.

The family of four is a loving and happy family. José and Gladys have been together for 6 years and they started a family in Santa Ana, a little town just outside Antigua. José works as a blacksmith and Gladys is a housewife and takes care of the boys. They managed to build a makeshift home out of sugar cane and blankets for the walls, and the roof was made of sheet metal.

The family was very enthusiastic about receiving a house build from us and so talked to their other family members to get the paperwork for their small area of land. They also visited the Project to find out more about our organization and were delighted to receive some clothes for their trouble.

The house was built by Teens Inc. a service team from Philadelphia who have been volunteering with us and building houses for over 15 years. In three days the team was able to build a brand new, comfortable and dignified home for the Gutierrez family. During the handover ceremony there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, as the family shared their gratitude to Teens Inc. and the GOD’S Child Project. That wasn’t the end of our support, however, as our Sponsorship department was also able to provide the family with a new bed so that Angel and José could sleep comfortably.

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

This year so far we have built 14 homes for families in need. We have only been able to do this thanks to the dedication and generosity of our donors, volunteers and Service Teams.

The first group of 9 volunteers who arrived in January of this year was led by Teri Brandt, a volunteer originally from North Dakota with nearly 20 years of volunteering with Nuestros Ahijados. Like Teri, most of the volunteers are grandmothers and nurses, becoming friends in the workplace and hearing non-stop about Teri’s exploits in Guatemala. This friendship and dedication was extended to each Guatemalan family they met that does not have the most basic of resources. 3 houses were built in San Juan Alotenango, a municipality in the south of the department of Sacatepéquez. For three days this group of volunteers worked extremely hard to build decent homes and improve the living conditions of two beautiful families.

The second group of volunteers this year built three houses for families who lived in inadequate conditions, as was the case of Doña Fernanda*, who does not have a formal job and must support her three children with what she earns by taking shifts as a waitress and with her small vegetable stall. "I went to Nuestros Ahijados and thank God they took me into consideration, because when you have children and see the need it is better to ask for help and take advantage of people’s generosity, so they can give us a little of the blessings they have," said Doña Fernanda.

A few streets away, we learned the story of Juana*, who at only 21 years old is raising a 4-year-old girl and is currently 4 months pregnant. She previously had to abandon her studies but now shares her time between housework and studying 9^th grade. "Sometimes it gets complicated accommodating everything but with time management and the determination to succeed for my family everything is possible, so we are very happy that they are building us our house. We do not have a way to repay them, but God is going to reward them," she told us.

At the end of the week, three houses were delivered in an emotional handing-over ceremony that left good feelings and the desire to continue helping the neediest. According to Darin Zumwalt, who was building houses for the third time, it was a great blessing to carry out this work. "You know we are called to be the hands and feet of Christ and what better way to show that love than to build a home for a family in need." Zumwalt said.

The group also left families with water filters, improved stoves, beds, clothes, shoes and basic supplies to change the lives of these families.

In February, with the arrival in Guatemala of the group led by Chuck Peterson, two families from San Juan Alotenango received decent housing, as in the case of Doña Zulma* who has raised her 4 daughters alone and Ana*, who had to leave her job to take care of her sick father and her 3-year-old daughter.

Chuck Peterson, who has more than 15 years’ experience working with Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, regularly brings new people to Guatemala to experience what personally changed his life.

One more house was built during February in San Lorenzo el Cubo, Sacatepéquez by a group of volunteers led by Don Miller, who on this occasion was enjoying his 14th time in Guatemala. His daughter told us that seeing the children in Asociación Nuestros Ahijados had changed the way he sees life.

In the next three months we have 9 Service Teams planning to visit and around 20 houses to be built. We are excited to be able to continue to support families in need.

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, to guarantee equal development opportunities through programmes in food and nutritional security, to support families through secondary, technical, and vocational education, health, child nutritional recovery, volunteering and Service teams, housing, economic and social empowerment of women and their families. We also fight human trafficking through long-term solutions to the causes in Guatemala, India and the United States. Nuestros Ahijados is an affiliate of the organization THE GOD'S CHILD Project (GCP).

This year through our housebuilding programme 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 or 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 wanted to give their children better opportunities in life, starting with improved living conditions, especially as the rainy season had arrived and their previous house was 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 two 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. Our Padrinos department helped carry the stove across the river and up to the family. Now the family has an economical and more environmentally-friendly way to cook their food.

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 has been working for 30 years to break the chains of poverty through education, housing and healthcare. Please click the link below to donate to support us in our ongoing mission.

June and July have been very busy months for us here at Nuestros Ahijados, especially for our house building programme. Over the past two months we have been visited by 8 Service Teams, all extremely ready and excited to help in our mission to provide for people in desperate need of a home.

Our social workers regularly receive requests for houses, and organise visits in the villages and towns around Antigua Guatemala to see which families have the greatest need. Over the past two months we have built 14 houses in various locations around Antigua, including San Juan Alotenango, San Lorenzo El Cubo and Pastores. This brings the total number of houses for this year up to 23.

In many of the houses we have also donated stoves, beds and water filters to the families to ensure that the family had access to clean drinking water and were safe from smoke inside their houses. They also now no longer have to sleep on a dirt floor. Some families also received a separate kitchen this month.

One of the families that received a house in July was the Astun Shoc family. They family has been known to the Project for a number of years as we have been helping the oldest child, Fausto, with physical therapy and medical treatment. Fausto has a delay in his neurodevelopment, with partial paralysis in his legs and hands, as a result of perinatal asphyxia and is unable to walk without the use of a walker. Thanks to donations we have been able to help him with medical appointments, new walking equipment and physical therapy. We also saw the need of the family as a whole and have provided them with water filters and an economical stove before building them a house.

The family consists of mother, Karen (24), Fausto (10) and his little sister Daniela (5), although they live on the same land as their grandmother, Eva, and their uncles, aunts and cousins. It is often Eva who has to take care of the children whilst Karen goes to work in a boutique shop. Karen earns just Q850 ($113) a month to support her children.

One of our brilliant service teams, Benilde-St Margaret’s Service Team, who were on their 7^th mission with the GOD’S CHILD Project, travelled down to Guatemala to help Fausto and his family as one of the three houses they built. It took three days of hard work to build the family their house, as well as a fourth day to build the family a kitchen. The family was extremely grateful for their house and couldn’t wait to move in. Their quality of life has drastically improved with this new house, and hopefully so too will the health of Fausto.

All 14 families who have received a house in the past two months are extremely grateful for the generosity, love and hard work by the service teams and people who support the house building programme. Their lives have improved and they now have a better chance of a brighter future.

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

Our service team department has been working extremely hard this year to continue with our goal to break the chains of poverty in Guatemala through housing. So far this year we have built 8 houses for families in need with the help of our service teams and donors.

One of the families to receive a house this year is the López family. They consist of father, Alfredo, Mother, Carmelina, and four children, Aracely, Alfredo, Azucena and Adolfo, aged between 5 and 17.

Whilst many of the families who receive houses from us are families that have visited our Project to request our support, the López family was actually approached by us after we became aware of their current situation. We were visiting a child in our scholarship programme who had recently changed house and saw that his neighbours, the López family, were living in derelict conditions. We reached out to them, confirmed that their living situation was in dire need of change and offered them the chance to be a part of our housebuilding programme.

The house they were living in before was a single room made of used sheet metal with a dirt floor. The house inside had no space for anything other than three beds and so their kitchen was outside the front door. Their fridge was open to the elements and their stove let smoke drift into the room where the family lived and slept.

Alfredo works on a farm and Carmelina weaves and sells traditional clothes and fabrics, but the money they earn is not enough to cover all the family needs. Carmelina suffers from diabetes, but cannot always afford to buy her medicine every month. The four children are all studying in public schools, but are a few years behind where they are expected to be as they have not always been able to attend their classes.

Along with our service team members our staff, which also included our new Nuestros Ahijados Directors Joanne Wessels and Jorge Chour, spent three days building a new, more dignified house for the family. The previous house was not knocked down but rather will be converted into the kitchen, meaning that the family has a lot more space than before and can live more comfortably. The looks on the family’s faces in the handing-over ceremony said more than their words ever could. It felt like there was divine intervention to cross our paths.

In addition to the house being built we also provided the family with some essentials to make their lives easier and safer. A new economical stove with a chimney was given to the family so they can cook for cheaper and the smoke will no longer put the family in danger as they live and sleep. An Ecofilter to provide the family with safe drinking water to ensure they are no longer at risk every time they feel thirsty, and finally, an orange tree, donated by a kind supporter of the Project through our Wish list, perhaps symbolizing the hope we have that this change and the growth of the family will bear fruit.

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