Sustainable Income Plans in Latin America

I hope all is well. It has been a great few months on the projects and to make it even better, GlobalGiving will be matching all individual donations to this page up to $50 by 50% between today, Tuesday 25th March to Friday 28th March. It would be fantastic if you could donate and take advantage of this extra matching and thank you in advance. 

Work continues on the new centre for Plan Costura in one of our communities in Guatemala whilst meetings are held to start a new plan in another community which will provide opportunities for dozens of teenagers and mothers.

The new school year gets back underway this month in Peru and we will be continuing with our local Phoenix teacher as well as providing daily fruit for the children. We will also be buying gas for the school meals which will be enhanced with fresh vegetables from the school garden.  

Classes have resumed for the second half of the school year. Work has begun with the school vegetable garden which will provide continuous food for the daily meals. Not everything can be successfully grown at 3,500m (11,500ft) so they have planted cabbages, carrots and beetroot. It is 100% organic using animal fertilizer.

As part of our 20th Anniversary charity challenge in Ecuador we will be building a Plan Cuy (guinea pigs) sustainable plan which includes a large warm structure. The first harvest of our second large bean Plan Huerto has taken place. Most of the proceeds are currently being reinvested into expanding the programme and replanting the current plans.

Many thanks for all your support for the projects and we’ll be in touch in the next couple of months with a further update.

Cheers

I hope all is well with you. It has been a great few months on the projects with the final harvest of the school vegetable garden in Peru this year being shared between the families ensuring fresh produce over the coming weeks during the holiday with potatoes being planted in advance of the new school term next March.

Now we have the oven the students are learning how to bake. Recently they made t’anta wawa (guaguas de pan) which is a traditional sweet bread to celebrate Day of the Dead and is eaten throughout November.

Meals will be supplemented with our school vegetable garden and more hot food can be prepared with the oven we built this year.   

With the school year finished in Guatemala attention now turns to identifying new children and teenagers to receive scholarships and classroom materials for the new school year starting in January. We will be increasing the number of students to four hundred. Work has started on expanding our Plan Costura sustainable plan (sewing business) in two communities which will mainly benefit single mothers and students.

With the expanded Plan Costura sustainable plan we hope that even more students will stay in education with the proceeds they can make from the sewing business as well as single mothers being able to generate an income for their children. We will continue with our local teacher who will give extra-curricular help to the students as well as training in Plan Costura.

We continue to expand Plan Huerto in Ecuador by sewing seeds taken from the first harvest in a new area which will benefit even more families. The initial Plan Huerto has been replanted for the second crop.

With the sustainable plans we will continue to expand Plan Moo which will help cover teachers’ costs in the future. Our aim is to purchase ten more cows over the next year or so. Expansion of Plan Huerto will continue with two separate projects already providing income in two communities as well as helping to cover Plan Moo management.

We will be celebrating our 20th Anniversary in Ecuador in May with a volcano charity challenge as well as spending a day in the community doing some hands-on work! If you worked with us in the past and fancy coming back to reminisce or just want to climb some volcanoes whilst getting involved in a charity challenge whilst helping the projects please do let us know by replying to this newsletter.   

Thank you all so much for your support this year which has allowed us to achieve so much and we hope you can continue to support the projects in the future - we have so much still to do!

Have a great 2025

Cheers