By Heather Graham | Executive Director
While it may be the midpoint in our school year here in Casa Guatemala, we are happy to see that our friends and Casa Guatemala family members from around the world are starting to enjoy the summer. It is such a blessing that we can, once again, open our doors and our hearts to the many groups of volunteers who have been waiting for the safe return of our short term Volunteer Vacations program! Things have been on hold in so many ways since the pandemic hit: We haven't had volunteers and we have held back on taking on major projects to ensure we could cover our basic necessities through the ongoing times of insecurity. Having visitors return is a breath of fresh air for all of us! They fill us with joy with their love, inspire us with their activities and tend to our needs with their service projects. We have a different group coming each month this summer, and all of them will bring some much needed improvements to Casa Guatemala, while also supporting our Hotel Backpackers which continues to struggle along with the whole of Guatemala's tourism industry.
Last month we were so happy to receive our long standing supporters, Team Inspire, who have been volunteering and creating an impact each year at Casa Guatemala since 2014. A combination of the Anderson/Peña family and members of the Global Truth Center in Los Angeles, this year they decided they needed their own name and so, Team Inspire was born! And they are living up to their name! They took on a whopper of a project this year with the renovation and make over of our kitchen and dining hall! Thanks to their fundraising efforts, we were able to replace all of the stoves, strip, sand and varnish the floors and tables, and purchase a brand new industrial oven and an industrial immersion blender! Our amazing staff worked so hard in the hottest days of summer to get the floors done before their arrival so they could be present to help with the painting and for the arrival of the new equipment. And of course, they also brought their creative activities with new songs to learn and dances to choreograph! It is such a joy to have groups like Team Inspire who continue to return each year to create long lasting memories and relationships!
If you follow us on Social Media, you will have seen that we also had a very important visit from our friends at Agua Viva International who just last week, installed a professional water purification system! This is a major game changer for all of us! We can’t wait to see the difference in how much water the kids will drink now as we put into practice the health and hygiene workshops that our education team were trained to conduct during the visit. The project will be managed by our team of staff members who were certified in the production of the bottled water for our consumption all over Casa Guatemala!
We are always looking for new opportunities to create long lasting relationships with groups who want to spend a week with us and bring their skills and knowledge to help us improve our work! We are looking forward to seeing our Volunteer Vacation program grow! If you are interested in joining us with your group, please contact me directly!
Everyone in our Casa Guatemala family plays an important role, whether you can come here directly, or donate from afar. We are so grateful to all of you and the love and support you provide in helping us to change the world, one child at a time.
I am sure that we are all feeling the strain of the current economic climate around the world. Here in Casa Guatemala, where we rely so much on fuel every day for our transportation, our energy and our cooking, it has been extremely difficult to continue to make ends meet with the constantly rising prices of diesel, gasoline and propane. As much as we are able to use our solar panels to limit our generator use, we still need to make daily trips in the boat and weekly trips in the van and of course we have to feed the kids! Thankfully, our new stoves and oven are more efficient than the old ones, so we are managing to save a bit of gas that way, and we always cook our beans over the fire outside because they just taste so much better that way! Regardless of how hard we try, we can’t escape the increase to our monthly budget.
As the saying goes, many hands make light work. And that is where our Core Supporters make a big difference! Our monthly donors help us to cover the core of our day to day expenses! Whether it's $5, $50 or $500, together it helps us to get through the months where we don’t have major donations to cover the budget. And though it would be great to receive a major donation that would allow us to have our budget for the year in advance, it has been the combination of big and small donors who have continued to help us pull through month after month, year after year! Thank you so much to all of you who are already monthly donors, your impact is really appreciated, especially right now when everything is more expensive!
If you haven’t already, and you are able to, please consider becoming a monthly donor and joining the heart of our Casa Guatemala Family! We can’t do this without you!
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By Heather Graham | Executive Director
By Heather Graham | Project Leader
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