They say it takes a village to raise a child: Our village spans across the globe. With your help, we are able to provide an education, healthcare and nutrition for over 200 children from 30 different indigenous Mayan communities in Rural Guatemala. Casa Guatemala's Children's Village provides a safe and loving environment where children receive a free primary education, healthy meals and medical care. We focus our projects on families who don't have access to these services otherwise.
In rural Guatemala, only 30% of indigenous children finish elementary school, and go on to high school. Nationally, 45% of children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. In the first 7 months of 2021there were 3203 pregnancies reported in girls from 10 to 14 years old. The isolated areas Izabal and Alta Vera Paz are not very accessible, so government programs and schools are often nonexistent or extremely lacking. The communities lack schools, electricity, roads and nearby clinics.
We focus our energy on creating equal access to education, ending food scarcity and providing medical care for families and children who don't otherwise have access to these services. By seeking out the most isolated villages, we can fill the gap in services that are not yet available to them so that their children will not fall through the cracks and become statistics. Giving girls equal access to education will reduce child marriages and pregnancies by ensuring they continue their studies.
After 40+ years of providing our services, we have seen first hand the long term impact in the quality of life of the families we support. We see an increase in the level of education received with many of our graduates completing high school and working as professionals. Girls who continued studies married later and thus had less children than previous generations. Less children make it easier to provide healthy meals and reduce malnutrition. Families put more importance on higher education.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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