This project will help 10 unaccompanied child migrants return safely and sustainably to their rural homes in Guatemala, where they will reunify with their families and reintegrate safely into their communities. By matching children with local non-profits, they will have access to social services, education, job skills, and vocational training to help build successful futures.
Each year, thousands of Guatemalan children who enter the US alone are ordered to return home, where they may face extreme poverty, abuse, and violence. Unfortunately, no formal system exists that addresses their safe return and threatening conditions in their homelands. KIND helps these children safely reunify with their families in Guatemala and provides them with counseling, social services, skills training, and scholarships so they can become productive members of their home communities.
KIND staff conducts interviews in order to create personalized plans to match the needs of each child. Children are paired with a local nonprofit partner to provide ongoing support such as meeting at the airport, coordinating reunification with family, counseling and social services such as medical and psychological care, skills training, scholarships, and youth empowerment retreats. This assistance addresses the children's initial reasons for migrating and provides alternatives to re/migration.
In addition to building the self-esteem, skills, and confidence of the individual children, the project further helps their families and communities. It creates a safety net to help ensure that children sent back from the US return home both safely and sustainably, therefore breaking the often dangerous cycle of migration. Additionally, it helps rural indigenous communities thrive by developing the skills of their children and keeping families together.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
