At 8 years old, GHA is steady and strong, expanding upon our education mission while continuing our construction program. Our superb local staff, Director Maria Madai Yojcom and Social Worker Cecy Batz Bizarro, serve the most pressing needs of their communities.
GHA has a deep commitment to education and now offers weekly workshops to the mothers of GHA's 56 scholarship students. The mothers suggest the topics and GHA finds teachers. Workshops have included legal rights, nutrition, crafts, STDs, and entrepreneurship. These workshops are enthusiatically received. We were pleased to receive a grant from American Women for International Understanding to help support this empowering initiative.
In October we invited our 15 university scholarhip students to a celebratory dinner. These students and their families have overcome huge challenges to reach this level while the average indigenous child in Guatemala attends school only 2.5 years. We are exceedingly proud of these young people, and terribly thankful for our donors who support them. You should know that by doing so, generations of a family will likely rise beyond poverty.
For our sponsored students we offer enrichment workshops with topics such as ecology, recycling, photography, family planning and diversity. We offer and require tutoring for any of our students who are struggling, as well as Spanish language classes for children entering school who hear only Tz’utujil spoken at home. And in November GHA produced our 4th annual Vacation School in remote Pasajquim, offering 100 kids classes in art, music, science, sports, crafts and more during their summer break…..and, importantly, a healthy meal each day.
We continue to build ecologically sustainable homes for families whose homes were unsafe, unstable and unsecure (46 homes to date) while improving stable homes by laying cement floors over dirt (138 to date) and leaking lamina roofs with new (45). Safe housing in which good hygiene can be maintained is essential to the welfare of a family. According to UC Berkeley’s Center of Evaluation for Global Action, replacing dirt floors with cement results in 13% less diarrhea and a 20% reduction of anemia. Consequently, toddlers score 30% higher on language and communication skills.
As from the beginning, the five founding siblings pay all overhead costs, including staffing, office expenditures and our own transportation.
Every penny from donors directly funds one of our projects. We welcome you to partner with us in these efforts.