History
Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala founder Frances Dixon
After leaving her childhood home in British Columbia in the late 1950s, Frances Dixon worked and traveled the world. Ghana, New Zealand, England, Boliva–they all enchanted her—then moved on. Until the 1980s, when she reached Guatemala in the midst of its 36-year armed conflict.
Outside of Huehuetenango, she followed a narrow unpaved road snaking into the Cuchumatan mountains, curious to learn what lay at the road’s end. She happened upon Quetzalí, one of dozens of tiny villages in the rainforest where people displaced by the conflict were hunkered down, trying to carve out a life. There was no reliable water supply, few roads to speak of, no schools—not even paper and pencils. Every child who was old enough to walk was at work in the coffee fields or minding their brothers and sisters. The civil war flared around them; arbitrary violence could erupt at any moment.
The poverty, fear, and hardship exceeded any that Frances had witnessed in her lifelong travels. Compelled by the desperate conditions, Frances created the non-profit organization Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala to partner with the Mayan people with the hope of helping them to rebuild their lives. In 1991, AAV began to raise funds from individuals and organizations to support priority projects in the villages. At the request of village leaders, the first funds went for the purchase of land for a primary school in Quetzalí. In the decades since, AAV has funded many such schools and dozens of other projects, including building roads, homes, and water systems and undertaking a multi-village tuberculosis treatment project.
Frances currently divides her time between Guatemala and North Miami Beach, Florida.
