Fight Child Malnutrition in Rural Guatemala

Thanks to the support of our caring donors, Pueblo a Pueblo’s nutritional school lunch program continues to strengthen in Santiago Atitlán.  Our organization has been providing hot, nutritional lunches for the Panabaj school children all year.  Similarly, since tropical storm Agatha we have provided a healthy snack to the children at Chukumuk as well.  With access to food remaining the leading cause of malnutrition in Guatemala, Pueblo a Pueblo will continue to make great strides in its mission of empowering the indigenous community to improve their own lives.  The second successful harvest of vegetables from our Organic School Garden gives hope for us all that one day the community will be more self-sufficient and that food shortages will be a fading memory.  Until that day comes, however, the children will continue to depend on the foundation built by donors like you who see their potential.  Pueblo a Pueblo and the children thank you for your generosity!

School Nutrition Program Expands to Chukumuk As families--many of them families of sponsored children--move from Panabaj to Chukumuk, Pueblo a Pueblo is expanding its school nutrition program. Beginning July 2010, we will help provide basic school nutrition to the students of the Chukumuk Provisional School. It is critical to support sponsored children at their new school, particularly in the face of storm-caused food shortages ahead. And after meetings between the school director and Pueblo a Pueblo staff, it became apparent that all of the children in Chukumuk could benefit from a program similar to our school lunch program in Panabaj. Chukumuk students usually received only a morning snack, not lunch. Recently, even their snack has been discontinued due to lack of funding from the local government. Pueblo a Pueblo aspires to forge a strong relationship with Chukumuk, where many of our sponsored children's families are now moving. We are starting by resuming the morning snack for all of the students in Chukumuk, with the eventual goal of implementing a full school lunch program there in addition to our Panabaj program. Chukumuk currently has 326 students and attendance, which could jump to 540 as children from Panabaj continue to move to the community. Your generous donations in June are helping us to start their school nutrition program almost immediately, before post-Agatha shortages can cause malnutrition. Any additional help you can spare can help make sure we can continue these programs.