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To the visitor, Mayan women in the highlands of Guatemala don’t appear
poor because, in tourist areas where they work, they dress in colorful
and beautifully woven traditional clothes – huipils and long skirts. When
you go behind the tourist facade, however, you encounter women who are
desperate, often raising families on their own because their partners have
abandoned them or gone off to work in urban areas. Based in Panajachel,
Guatemala, Mayan Families is staffed almost exclusively by indigenous people.
When Sharon Smart-Poage, one of the NGO’s founders, showed me around the homes of people receiving help from Mayan Families, I was struck by the dearth of everything – water, electricity, plumbing, stoves. The lucky families receive slow-burning stoves and rotary water filters. Families in crisis receive emergency housing and food.
Mayan Families tries to provide a bit of everything – medical aid, chickens for food and generating income, holiday food baskets (1000 donated in 2008 for Christmas), sewing programs in area community centers, micro-loans, even small animal welfare – sterilization and adoption. One of its most important programs is education – without scholarships, many indigenous families cannot afford to pay school fees and buy uniforms for their children to attend school.
The Mayan people, the majority in Guatemala, have long been oppressed and were victims of genocide in the civil war of the 1980s. The US government has often ignored the indigenous people of Central America. NGOs like Mayan Families have stepped in to make a difference, helping people to survive and advance.
Please visit MayanFamilies.org and please refer your email contacts to their website.
What impressed me more than anything about Mayan Families is that it does so much with so little. Helping Mayan Families is easy – simply send a check of whatever size to:
Mayan Families, P.O. Box 52, Claremont, N.C. 28610
And, if you have the chance to visit beautiful Lake Atitlan, please take the time to visit Mayan Families.
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Comments
Alexis said on Tuesday, March 09, 2010:
This group has an excellent website with an easy to use donation button. You can even donate monthly, a wonderful way to make sure your donation, however small, lasts over time. Check it out!Emily Stoper said on Friday, March 19, 2010:
I visited a village on Lake Atitlan and actually saw the huge difference made by organizations like this. Guatemala is one of those countries where the government and the major economy offer little to most of the population - so this kind of NGO makes the difference between despair and hope to many of the poor.