The Project - Chocantariy, Guatemala Through one of our contacts in Guatemala, CasaSito Association and Alice Lee, we learned of a small project in the highlands that was in great need of financial support. This project is located in Chocantariy in the northwest highlands of Guatemala.
In 2008 and 2009 Give Kids A Chance helped CasaSito Association to set up a pre-primary school program for the children in this village. This program was a necessary component for the educational success of these native Maya children. They needed to learn and practice Spanish in order to succeed in the regular public schools. In 2009, we assisted the project by contributing to the salary of the pre-primary teacher. We visited the centre in January 2009 for the grand opening of the classroom and met with the teacher. He is a very competent and kind teacher who is working very hard to ensure these young children can succeed. This is a huge step forward - their mothers are uneducated and prior to the bakery project relied on manual labour jobs in the fields or chopping and selling firewood for which they would earn approximately $1.00 per day. Now, their children have access to education which is the only route to changing their lives.
Combined Bakery and Daycare Centre Thirteen widows in this village had come together with a proposal to create a combined bakery and daycare centre. The women desperately needed some independent income, otherwise they could only work in the fields or plantations for a pittance ( $1.00 per day) and their children were used as supplemental child labour. Their idea was to create a bakery since there is no source of bread in their community — the walk to the nearest bakery was two hours through mountainous terrain. They wanted to create co-operative shifts of baking and childcare in order to keep their children close by, safe and out of the field labour ranks. Give Kids helped in 2006 with a donation to assist with construction of the Bakery.
Grand Opening The grand opening was held in late 2006 and the bakery was up and running. In October, 2007 the construction of the daycare was completed and now while the mothers work to earn their independent income, the children are safe.
