By Erin Crandell | Project Leader
What better time to reflect on the past year than during the holiday season? Over eight months ago, you helped us save the San Jorge Feeding Center. Since then, the Center has been providing fifty-five members of our Elderly Care Program and almost thirty Kids in Critical Need a safe place to eat lunch every day.
Last week, Mayan Families held a Christmas party at its Panajachel office for all the members of the Elderly Care Program. At this party, we were able to see just how profoundly the San Jorge Feeding Center has changed the lives of the elderly. Many of the elderly in our program have been abandoned by their families—mostly due to the family’s financial situation—but having the Center has given them a chance to form a new community.
Lucia, a member of the Elderly Care Program, was delighted to be a part of the Christmas party. Lucia is from Santa Catarina, and she travels to the Panajachel Elderly Feeding Center every day for lunch. She said she was grateful for the feeding center because it gave her somewhere she could eat lunch every day with her friends. As Lucia proudly showed off her pinecone tree that she had decorated during the party, her near toothless smile was contagious. She was excited to get home and use the tree as decoration in her house in Santa Catarina.
It was heart warming to see the warmth and comradery among the elderly at the Christmas party. A group of ladies started playing around with the pinecones as they were being handed out, even placing them on their heads as funny hats! Because many of the elderly are hard of hearing and sight, children from our Kids in Critical Need Program and volunteers helped many members of the elderly with their crafts. The bridge between the elderly and the youth in the room provided a strong symbol of what Christmas spirit truly means; community, giving, gratefulness, and happiness.
This sense of community is exactly what we hoped to achieve when we built the new San Jorge Feeding Center. Now that we have purchased the building and are committed to supporting the elderly and orphans of San Jorge, we want to do even more! In 2016, we want to realize our dream of transforming the new San Jorge Feeding Center into a Community Center; where the entire community of San Jorge would be able to access Mayan Families services.
To that end, we are increasing our fundraising goal to $25,000, and we hope that we can count on your support! We want the San Jorge Center to be a place where the elderly come to have lunch and play bingo, but we also want it to be available as a tutoring center for struggling students from our Student Sponsorship Program. It would be a place that we could set up one of our medical clinics, or hold one of our Well Mother, Well Baby workshops. Having that kind of space would allow Mayan Families to work even closer with the members of the San Jorge community, and we need you to help us make that happen!
The holidays are a perfect time to reflect on the meaning of community, and we are so grateful that each of you has joined us in making an impact on the community of San Jorge. So from our family to yours, have a happy holiday!
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