This is a project run in Santa Lucia to give the kids in the area 2 decent meals a week. Basically every Tuesday and Thursday the kids are fed with a high protein meal (which also happens to be delicious I must say) in a purpose built canteen. The project also has a church with mass being said about 5 times a week, and a roof garden with some veg and some chickens.
Guatemala is the 4th worst country in the world for malnurishment in children and these children are among the poorest so it is very unlikely that they are getting anything close to what they need. As you can see in the photos the children are all small. This is not necessarily because they are young but because of the lack of a proper diet. There is a small black haired girl in a lot of the photos that looks about 4 at the most but is actually 8. Only about 5 percent of people in Guatemala actually own their own property. This shanty town of about 30 houses is built in a steep valley. Basically nobody would normally build here because of the treat from landslides and the difficulty getting materials in and out but the people here have no other option it is as simple as that. The area has the typical problems associated with poverty such as drug abuse, low self esteem, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy all of which Hilmar is trying to tackle by showing the kids that anything is possible if you keep trying. We had the chance to walk around the town and meet some of the families. For example one family was one that the 4 kids were under 11 (one being the little girl who looks 4) living in a one bedroom house with the mother and father both working when they can but never enough and the kids left to fend for themselves whenever both parents were lucky enough to have work. This family was lucky enough in that they had a well built concrete structure provided by the same people as the community centre. The young couple next door are living in a structure made of some timber and galvanized sheeting. It gets cold here in Guatemala at night because of the altitude and with the risk of landslides on the site I really wouldn’t spending a night there never mind raising a family. The young couple had a two month old baby who was sick but as neither of the parents had been working for over a month they were finding it very hard to pay for medicine. There is no social welfare or free health care in Guatemala.
Basically myself and Denise (class mate in Spanish school) go here at 12.30 and play with the kids for about an hour or so and then help dish out the food and clean up afterwards. Gonna hopefully do a bit of construction and maintenance work before I leave too. We are by no means vital in anyway to the project but I do think the kids really appreciate it to be fair and it is really enjoyable. Before I left I raised some money, thanks to all involved again, and the total sum was 2,100. Initially I planned on bringing it all to Chiantla but after spending some time here I decided to donate a 100 euro to the project. I did this for two reasons, one it is definitely a worthy cause and the other is simply that the project didn’t have enough money to open the first week we were there. It costs about 30 euro to feed the 100 or so kids that turn up on any given day so this money has paid for about 300 dinners in total. Pretty good financing on the part of the project.
The project itself is run by a pretty remarkable person. Hilmar is a local man who about 3 years ago decided that he wanted to do something to help the people of his community. When he started feeding the kids they were sitting on the ground with some food. In the space of only 3 years he has managed to raise enough money to build the community centre and church, feed the kids on a regular basis within this time along with building numerous houses and spreading the project into other communities. He is pretty inspirational to be fair and so positive even though he has the worries of 30 or so families. When people need something they go to Hilmar. He has managed to build up relationships with Christian organizations in Guatemala and in Canada and the US who help with the financing but when he started out there was none of this. In the best possible way a meeting with him really makes you take a look at yourself. Hilmar is not a priest or a missionary in fact as well as looking after the 100 kids in the project he manages to raise his own 3 kids, the youngest 8 months and provide for his wife too. gt.inlexca.org
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