Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

From PBS NewsHour:
Senior correspondent Ray Suarez, just back from a reporting trip, describes Guatemala as a land of exquisite beauty, but also of exquisite agony. Violence against women is systemic and widespread – part of an overall pattern of violence that the citizens of Guatemala, who have endured several civil wars in the last 50 years, are suffering. The country is also hard hit with malnutrition and has one of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the hemisphere.

Ray spoke with Hari Sreenivasan about his trip and the challenges Guatemalans faces on a daily basis.

On March 7-8, the global health unit will air two stories from Guatemala on the NewsHour, focusing on family planning and maternal health and violence against women. The NewsHour will also air follow-up discussions with representatives of NGO groups working in Guatemala and government officials. President Obama will visit Central America in mid-March as part of a three-nation trip.

Original post here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/preview-picturesque-guatemala-overwhelmed-by-violence-poverty.html

Happy with clothes and shoes for school

A few days ago, Adopt-a-Village found Suleidi, Nelson, Breieda, Elmer, and Deneisi.  Their father died two years ago when his wife was pregnant with Deneisi.  With no breadwinner in the family, their poverty is extreme.  The children were walking to school barefooted—their mother has been unable to afford to buy shoes for them.  Adopt-a-Village responded immediately with school clothes and shoes.  Now, going to school can be a happy event, not one of shame because they cannot dress as other children.

We are hoping that someone out there will want to help them.  A 100 lbs. of corn for $25 will insure that have tortillas.  Or you can sponsor one (or two!) of them.  Happily Breseida has been taken into the care of Leigh and her adopted Guatemala daughter, through sponsorship. We would love to see others offer that same compassion to Breseida’s brothers and older sister. Please email us at guatvillage@gmail.com.

School kids have just finished their three-month stint laboring in the coffee fields and are now back in school.  Picking coffee means more that taking the bean off the bush.  It means keep a wary eye on the ground at the same time for poisonous snakes.   And it means hauling heavy loads of produce on young backs to the scales before they can receive a few pennies for their hard day’s labor.  I remember as an 11-year-old, picking raspberries and strawberries for pay during my school break.  It didn’t kill me, but neither did I have to carry 100-lbs sacks of produce on my back or hope that a lethal snake-bike wouldn’t finish me off, like these kids do.

The stark fact is, child labor proliferates in this region of Guatemala much as it did in the Dickens-era, 200 years ago. In fact, one particularly unethical farmer, who owns a large coffee farm in an Adopt-a-Village sponsor village—gotten by ill gains, as the story goes—pays children $1.20 to work from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (about one-sixth the national minimum wage). He gets away with it (and has for decades) because there is no government entity or children’s rights organization to protect children from his illegal practices.  Moreover, parents, desperate to see their families survive, need every quetzal in order to keep their children fed and thus encourage them to work these long hours.

These harsh demands on children make them become adults way too quickly.  It is for this reason, I am so grateful to our child sponsors.  I feel that those children who are lucky enough to have sponsors enter their lives, stay a little younger, a little longer.  Sponsors, through their caring letters and small gifts and occasional visits, remind them that they are indeed still children, not adults in child-size bodies.  I sincerely thank all of you who offer such children kindness and care through sponsorship