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 UPDATE: Everyone should check out Transitions’ great new website at www.transitionsfoundation.org.
Mobilization, health, rehabilitation, education, leadership…
The Transitions Foundation is committed to making a difference in the lives of Guatemalans who may otherwise have few opportunities to grow, to learn, and to become literate and productive contributors to their Guatemalan culture. They provide rehabilitation, vocational, and educational training to disabled persons through the services offered at Transitions’ training centers.
Program Objectives:
- To provide life-skills training and mobility devices for physically disabled Guatemalans;
- To offer outreach support and medical product availability to disabled persons;
- To operate one special education classroom within a local school in a rural community for physically and mentally disabled children;
- To operate an offset printing and graphics design enterprise, with ongoing disabled student training and employment opportunities, offering printing service available to the public;
- To operate a wheelchair fabrication facility, providing highly individualized wheelchairs and other therapeutic equipment, providing ongoing leadership and technical training; and
- To operate a prosthetic/orthotic clinic with ongoing training and services available to Guatemalans with disabilities.
Workshop: Transitions operates a well-equipped workshop where they manufacture new wheelchairs and repair or modify existing ones. This operation employs 11 technicians, the majority of which have disabilities, who build rugged chairs well suited for the tough terrain of Guatemala. They employ modern MIG welding and other fabrication techniques, and maintain computerized records on each client so they can respond quickly to needed changes or repairs. Funding for much of their equipment, tools, and materials has come from Rotary International Foundation Grants, coordinated by the Portland, Oregon Rotary Club, and many other donors. During 2008, their workshop provided over 100 new and refurbished wheelchairs.
Prosthetic/Orthotic Clinic: Transitions operates a clinic to provide services to children and adults who are in need of a prosthetic limb or an orthotic leg brace. Due to the high number of birth defects and accidents in Guatemala, there is a large demand and need for these services. They work with local Guatemalan certified technicians to evaluate and manufacture the limbs and leg braces their patients need. Patients fitted with their limb or brace can achieve increased mobility and opportunities in their lives.
Since 2002, Transitions has provided care and treatment for over 200 prosthetic and orthotic patients. Many of the patients are children or youth and require ongoing treatment and adjustments to their equipment. Due to the high costs of providing these special devices, new patients can only be helped when defined funding is available.
Training for life: Transitions Foundation provided direct general educational scholarships for 53 disabled people during the 2008 school year. This includes educational costs such as tuition, materials and transportation to and from school.
Special Ed: They also assist low-income, physically and mentally disabled children through one rural special education classroom directed by a qualified teacher and therapist. Special education students receive multi-sensorial exposure, fine and gross motor skill stimulation and academic tutoring. Classrooms are wheelchair accessible, and parents and family members are encouraged to become involved.
Transitions will host the MIT Mobility Lab, as they test out 30, specially designed wheelchairs.
To learn more about Transitions, please visit their website.
CasaSito increases educational opportunities in rural areas of Guatemala so that indigenous people living in poverty can attend school, receive quality instruction, and obtain the skills they need to improve their lives.
CasaSito has two approaches for addressing educational needs, depending on location. In the Department of Sacatepéquez, they offer scholarships and work closely with local learning centers to provide in-depth and extensive support for students and families. In more remote areas, they work with community leaders to provide support for more short-term projects, such as school construction, education material grants, and training workshops.
- Scholarship: The CasaSito scholarship program focuses on indigenous junior high and high school students of the Sacatepéquez area who have good grades, but are unable to continue their studies due to their economic circumstances. With this program, students may choose their school career as long as their choices are within their budget and their family financial situation.
- School materials and facilities: CasaSito assists six communities in developing the basic resources that they need to provide a solid education. CasaSito provides support for school buildings, teachers’ salaries, furniture and technical equipment that is needed for “Telesecundaria” (a form of long-distance education where students learn from videos). CasaSito also offers school materials such as books, notebooks, and writing utensils. In very rural communities, CasaSito is assisting to build and furnish dorm rooms for students who travel long distances to attend school.
- Food Programs: Students cannot focus in school if they are always hungry. Therefore, CasaSito supports cafeterias in four of its partner programs. These cafeterias not only help children to focus in school, they also provide at least one nutritious meal each day. (And provide employment for community members, usually women.)
- Adult Skill Training: Adhering to their belief that empowering women is one of the effective ways in development, CasaSito provides three communities with skill development programs. CasaSito has trained women in baking, sewing, jewelry making, farming and literacy.
- Library and Computer Labs: CasaSito supports library and computer labs in four of its partner programs. These labs allow students and community members access to a wide variety of knowledge. They also foster a love of learning and reading that students will hopefully carry with them even after they finish their schooling.
- Festivals: CasaSito believes that a well-rounded education includes a variety of extracurricular activities. Therefore, CasaSito holds small festivals for organizations who wish to improve their programs in art, music, athletics, and debate.
As a part of educational mission, CasaSito strives to improve the living condition of the families of rural areas of Guatemala to a level from which they can build their own future and better lives.
- Rainwater Catchment Tanks Construction Program: This program improves domestic water supplies for rural villagers in Guatemala, where besides the lack of clean drinking water, water for bathing is greatly restricted, especially in the dry season, causing skin and other health problems. Each tank can hold up to 6,000 liters of water, which if used properly will last 2-3 months of the dry season and offer clean water during the rainy season.
- Community health posts: They raise funds to help community health posts with equipment and medicine. They also look for associations and university volunteer programs to partner with local communities to improve the quality of health services and special projects such water quality control, medicinal herbal garden, workshops and intensive courses for health promoters.
- Emergency relief: They provide medical help and food supplies to communities and individuals who suffer from the lack of medical services or natural disasters. In 2005, CasaSito offered emergency food supplies to villages around the Tacaná area, which was very affected by Hurricane Stan. They often assist children and their families with medicine, hospital visits and emergency transport fees.
- Microfinance projects: They help associations to apply micro loans to equip their education centers and support mothers who are related to their partner associations to start small business in order to improve their income. One of the most important ingredients of social development in developing countries is the participation of volunteers. Every year, thousands of volunteers arrive in Guatemala and look for ways to help. However, not all of them have strong financial support and for those who stay in the Antigua area, the cost of living can be expensive.
Volunteers’ Program
- Volunteers: The Volunteer Program is very important to CasaSito. CasaSito relies on their volunteers for supporting their general education program. They teach classes, distribute materials, building tanks and centers. They contribute a great deal to the success of CasaSito and its partner communities.
- Volunteers’ House: The goal of the “Volunteers’ House Project” is to provide a comfortable and economical housing option for volunteers working in the Antigua area. The house is 7 blocks from Parque Central, near Parque San Sebastian. The minimum stay is two weeks and prices start at Q1000/month and depend on length of stay and whether you take a single or double room. The prices include use of a full kitchen, filtered water, coffee and tea, and unlimited access to a computer and high speed (wireless) internet.
For more information about CasaSito, please visit their website.
 Partnership in Women’s Ministries (PWM) is a partnership of ministries serving abused and abandoned women in Guatemala. This partnership comes to fill a huge void in Guatemala, where women lack total control of their lives, and are powerlessly subjected to lives of misery. These women, who are lacking resources and education, are desperately trying to survive and provide for their families. Tragically, they are all too often bound by violent relationships with abusive men.
PWM works with various ministries and organizations to provide multifaceted services to these women, including temporary shelter, counseling, legal services, discipleship, job training, and small business loans.
Their first shelter, El Refugio, (The Refuge) officially opened its doors for ministry on June 1, 2008, and their first client arrived two days later. Eunice and her three children, (Brian, Jasmine and Christian) were welcomed into the shelter with loving arms. Eunice had experienced abuse on almost every level for over the past six years. She shared that she felt isolated with nowhere to turn until her sister told her about PWM. Eunice and her children stayed with PWM for three weeks while restraining orders were processed by their director/attorney, Pamela, and plans were made for Eunice and the children to move to Solola with extended family. Pamela participated in this process as well, helping extended family understand that violence is not tolerable. She also met with local police to make them aware of the situation and the existence of the restraining order. Finally, she worked with Eunice to begin work baking ham and cheese croissants to earn an income.
PWM’s goal is to assist women and children in the physical, emotional, and spiritual healing necessary for them to re-enter society prepared to meet the needs of their families.
- COUNSELING is available for the women and children from a trained Guatemalan Christian counselor who meets weekly with each woman both individually and in a group setting.
- DISCIPLESHIP/MENTORING is provided by their in-house staff and discipleship teachers. The women and children receive optional classes and daily training in the areas of biblical teaching and Christian living, parenting, and healthy relationships.
- CHILDREN’S EDUCATION is provided. PWM pays expenses for the children to attend a nearby school and offer educational opportunities in the shelter.
- ADULT EDUCATION AND TRAINING is offered to the women. They offer assistance in job training, literacy training, and skill teaching, and seek to expand this area of service in the future.
- PHYSICAL CARE is provided to the women and children through shelter, food and clothing as well as meeting their basic medical and dental needs. Due to poverty, most of the women and children in their care have never been to a dentist and have had very limited medical care. Many have never owned a toothbrush and suffer from poor nutrition.
- FOLLOW UP AND SUPPORT is currently given to the families on a limited basis as they return to their communities. At this time PWM is able to maintain contact to make sure that the women are not falling back into abusive situations. PWM’s desire, with additional staffing is to provide more extensive follow up as they continue to encourage physical, emotional and spiritual development for these families, as well as additional training such as handling finances, encouraging children’s education, and goal setting.
To learn more about PWM, please visit their website.
 Adopt-a-Village (AAV) in Guatemala is a small, grassroots non-profit that works with remote villages in the rugged Northwestern Highlands region. This is an area of extreme poverty with few public services or other forms of assistance. AAV partners with leaders of these Mayan villages to build a more promising and sustainable future for their children by providing education and other critical support. The goal of Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala is to empower through education. Less than half of all children in Guatemala make it through sixth grade, and more than 2 million children–mostly Mayan girls living in rural areas like those where they work–don’t attend school at all.
Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala works closely with two dozen villages in the isolated northwestern region of the Department of Huehuetenango in western Guatemala and provides education opportunities that extend to some 250 villages in the region. The villages, scattered in the rainforest in the Cuchumatan Mountains, are accessible only by rugged dirt roads or walking paths winding up through the mountains. Many of the villages have been settled over the last 20 years by Mayan people who were displaced during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war and came to this region in search of affordable land. Families from different Mayan language groups that had until the war lived separately came together to form villages to work toward the common goal of a better future for their children. This is one of the poorest regions of Guatemala, with few public services or other sources of support. Employment and education opportunities are extremely limited and chronic malnutrition is pervasive; some children routinely go a day or more without eating.
AAV partners with village leaders to develop practical and relevant educational opportunities to give children and their parents the skills they need to build a better future. With support from their Child Sponsorship program, they began by building nine elementary schools in villages that previously had little or no access to primary education. As children have progressed through these schools, they have built on that foundation, supporting middle school programs, and providing scholarships for students to travel to attend high schools in distant towns. Their Mayan Center, a residential high school for students selected from 250 area villages, opened for fulltime students in January 2010. AAV also provides vocational programs for adults at the Mayan Center in areas such as carpentry, agriculture and forestry.
In addition to education, their Widows and Orphans program provides extra assistance to some of the poorest families in the region, including food, clothing and housing. All of AAV’s work is accomplished with the help and direction of the people and villages that benefit and who will ultimately assume the ongoing management and operation of the projects. To date, AAV has completed more than 60 major projects since they began in 1991.
To learn more about AAV, please visit their website.
 Quality education, healthcare, and family development for the region’s poorest children
Known for its beauty, culture, and history, the Panchoy Valley also has its marginal zones where homeless families and street children live. In these areas the unemployment rate is high, adolescents lack education, crime is prevalent, alcoholism is rampant, and familial violence is widespread. Taking these problems into mind, the idea of opening a specialized technical school amidst the Victorias, Bella Vista, and Papalillo neighborhoods of Jocotenango, Guatemala, may have seemed like a risk, but it was also the long-standing dream of Patrick Atkinson, Founder and Executive Director of the GOD’S CHILD Project (GCP). In his own words, “It is the PERFECT place for the GOD’S CHILD Project to be.”
Construction of the school was completed December 6, 2007, and classes began in January of 2008. The Scheel Center’s goal is to be a catalyst for community change on a large scale by giving hope to impoverished families, abused or abandoned children. Hope is given in three forms: Standard Education, Specialized Technical Training and Healthcare.
Standard Education: For much of the modern world, formal education starts around the ages of 4, 5 or 6. By the time a child enters first grade they have often had several years of academic enrichment to better prepare them to learn. Students at the Scheel Center come from a very different world. Many of the students who study at the Center have been robbed of their childhood in various ways. They have not had time to play and learn. Many have not had access basic necessities such as adequate food, clean water, shelter or medical care. For these and other reasons, the Scheel Center students have grown up without an opportunity to learn.
Before a student is in a position to successfully learn any subject, their basic needs must be met. Scheel Center students are provided with two filling and nutritious meals a day. For many of them this is the only food they will receive.
Specialized Technical Training: Because of the unique background of the students at the Scheel Center some of them will not be able to continue their academic pursuits after the 8th or 9th grade level, or they will at least need to secure a part time job in order to do so. In an effort to equip all their students for life after school the following technical courses are currently being offered to students when they start their “basico” year. Each course’s objective is to prepare a student with the prerequisite knowledge and skill required to get a job in that field.
- Carpentry: The carpentry program at the Scheel center began in 2009 and is off to a great start. During the first few months of the program both boys and girls were taught theory and took part in hands on training. First, students built their own workbenches; they then moved on to coat racks, frames for paintings and most recently: study desks, which they will later be able to take home and use for their other studies. (Many of their students do not have any hard surface to do homework on.)
- Culinary Arts: The cooking class is a favorite amongst many of the students of the Scheel Center. The cooking class focuses on:
- Sanitary cooking practices
- Use and care of commercial grade cooking equipment
- Preparation of both basic and advanced entrees and desserts
- Promoting a love for the culinary arts
- Computer Skills: Starting in October of 2009, students of the Scheel Center have access to a computer lab to begin acquiring the computer skills to prepare them to succeed in a high tech world. Computer courses will cover:
- Basic Computer Skills: typing, navigation of Windows, use of a word processor, use of a spreadsheet, accessing the Internet, using email.
- Research skills: performing Internet searches, criteria for a reputable Internet source.
Healthcare:
- Dunnigan Family Medical Clinic: Made possible by a generous donation from the Dunnigan Family in honor of Dr. Ralph J. Dunnigan & Mrs. Bernadette Dunnigan. The Dunnigan Family Clinic will soon be serving the medical needs of families and children throughout the Vista Hermosa area.
- Dental Clinic: The Scheel Center Dental Clinic will begin by serving the needs of the children and families enrolled at the Scheel Center. The dental clinic is a community education center where The God’s Child project gives dental hygiene education to families from the surrounding areas. The group expects for the clinic to become operational in March, 2010.
- Psychology Clinic: In operation since February 2009 the Psychology Clinic provides counseling and support for the children of the Scheel Center and their families. Currently run by their on-campus psychologist Leonel Almira, the clinic gives Scheel Students an ear to listen and Christ-focused counsel on how to deal with the challenges of growing up in the slums of Guatemala.
To learn more about The Scheel Center, please visit their website.
 El Nahual Community Center was founded in 2004 in order to address shortcomings in the Guatemalan national education system, particularly in Quetzaltenango and its surrounding communities. El Nahual is located on the outskirts of Quetzaltenango in a sector called Pacajá. This location, which straddles urban and rural areas, was chosen to allow El Nahual to serve as a hub of support for the often marginalized communities outside the city center.
El Nahual is a fully licensed non-profit organization funded by its Spanish language school. They are unique in that they require the individuals who choose to study with them to donate their time to volunteer in the low-income communities they serve. Their volunteers often take classes in the mornings and then get involved in their service projects, the bulk of which involve helping out with their educational programs for children and adults:
- Manos de Colores Niños: Their programs for children, “Manos de Colores” (Colored Hands), founded in 2004, provide instruction in English, art, music, theater, and others—subjects which most children would not otherwise receive in the Guatemalan public school system. Manos de Colores was created by their director, Jaime, after a long period of reflection on the national reality of education in Guatemala.
- Manos de Colores Adultos (Accelerated Primary School): The Accelerated Primary School Program was formed in 2006 to provide adults who never had the opportunity to complete their elementary education with a government-certified primary school diploma. Every Saturday at 8am, the El Nahual Community Center opens its doors to people who come to study Spanish, mathematics, and history taught by Guatemalan teachers. The program is provided at a very low cost and takes two years to complete.
- Padrinos de Colores: is a scholarship program for children, providing financial support to families in need of school registration fees, uniforms, books, required medical visits, and other fees associated with public school inscription. In a country where many people attend school for only three years out of the required six and dropping out to help support one´s family is common, El Nahual Padrinos believe that lack of money for small items such as notebooks and gym shoes should not keep a child from attending school.
Studying with El Nahual
El Nahual Community Center seeks enthusiastic students and volunteers who are motivated to give back to low-income communities in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala´s second largest city. They attract students from all over the world who want to do something meaningful during their travels. Their center is unique in that 100% of the profits from their language school return directly to the communities they serve through their educational programs for children and adults. To that end, they expect a minimum time commitment of volunteer work 4 hours per week from each of their students. The majority of their volunteer projects is educational and involves teaching basic English, arts and crafts, and doing other activities with children in their Manos de Colores programs. Studying Spanish at El Nahual provides students with invaluable international teaching experience while introducing them to grassroots development work and the opportunity to reach out to some of the poorest communities in Quetzaltenango.
Volunteer-only Program
El Nahual is almost entirely staffed by volunteers from Guatemala and abroad. Without the energy, enthusiasm and commitment of their volunteers, their organization could not survive. The work of their volunteers is directly responsible for El Nahual´s continued growth and impact on the communities they serve, and they value the contributions of their staff and volunteers in an atmosphere which fosters creativity, innovation and mutual respect. They are pleased to accept applications for their volunteer-only program for those individuals who want to get involved with El Nahual but do not wish to take Spanish lessons.
For more information about El Nahual, please visit their website.
PAVA is a non-profit organization that works closely with rural communities in the Department of Chimaltenango, Guatemala to achieve long-term sustainable development through community-based projects and programs. A full-time staff based in the bustling town of Chimaltenango manages PAVA’s programs, providing technical expertise and coordination for infrastructure projects, environmental programs, and education.
PAVA began work in 1983 in response to ongoing civil violence. Initially, PAVA provided emergency relief to isolated villages in Guatemala. Through PAVA’s efforts food, seed, and building materials reached over 90 hard-hit communities. PAVA took the lead in the country by conducting needs assessments in many areas most affected by the violence and was able to provide effective, focused assistance. Soon afterward, PAVA began to work on development projects that offered these rural citizens longer-term solutions to problems affecting their communities. Starting with those initial villages, PAVA developed a working method of considering project proposals from various rural communities which sought specific assistance in order to achieve clearly-defined objectives. Along with representatives from these communities, PAVA planned and designed the proposed projects.
For over twenty years, PAVA has met with much success by following the principle of community initiated proposals to foster community development and leadership in rural towns and villages in the Department of Chimaltenango. The U.S. PAVA Foundation was organized to support the ongoing work of PAVA Guatemala and became an official 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in November 1986.
In every project and program, PAVA collaborates with its beneficiaries on the basis of respecting local initiative. In working with PAVA, communities learn that by taking the time to organize their efforts and follow through to completion, they can make a positive difference in their community.
PAVA projects and programs include the following:
- School Construction
- Potable Water System Construction
- Bridge Construction
- Scholarship program and teacher professional development
- Environmental education and conservation programs
- Reforestation
To learn more about PAVA, please visit their website.
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