from the International Herald Tribune A United Nations report says rising food prices have pushed half a million Guatemalans into poverty.A report from the U.N's World Food Program says another half of million of Guatemala's poor are now living in extreme poverty due to increased prices for the country's basic food staples.Guatemalan have seen corn, rice and bean prices rise by more than 40 percent in the last two years.The report's author Nicholas Virzi of Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City said another 200,000 Guatemalans who are not living under the poverty line are also struggling to purchase food.More than half of Guatemala's 12 million people live on less than US$2 a day. Link to full article. May expire in future....
from the Tri City Herald Utah mission workers were among those found dead in this plane crash. - Kale By PAUL FOYSALT LAKE CITY A small plane that broke apart in Guatemala as the pilot attempted an emergency landing, killing 11 of the 14 people aboard, was carrying members of a Utah-based humanitarian group who were on their way to help build a school in a remote, impoverished area of the country.Seven of the dead were Americans, including the wife of Chris Johnson, acting chief executive of CHOICE Humanitarian, a West Jordan, Utah-based group that arranges relief missions around the world, according to Lew Swain, a board member for the group.The three survivors also are Americans, including a Utah businessman who was pulled from the wreckage by farmers shortly before it exploded Sunday...
from The Northern EchoA profile on a couple who are taking a year off for a mission trip to Guatemala. The country has a high crime rate, but the pair are willing to take the risk. - Kale A NURSE and her husband are taking a year-long career break and giving up creature comforts to travel to Central America and help some of the world’s poorest people.Community psychiatric nurse Sarah Hogg and her husband, Simon, have made the life-changing decision to spend a year in Guatemala, volunteering for a charity which helps street children and destitute single mothers.However, in order to share their skills and expertise in the extremely deprived town of Santiago Sacatepequez, the couple need to raise £600 in sponsorship for every month they are there.Mr and Mrs Hogg, both 32, set off for...
from WTOP A touching story of Lily Mackley, who helped another little girl in Guatemala. By TIFFANY ARNOLDHer name is Veronica Par. She is 10 and has five siblings. The youngest, 1, sleeps in the bed with the parents while the rest of the children sleep on cardboard pallets on the concrete floor. Her father earns $16 a week as a gardener. Her mother earns $2 a week by making beaded jewelry."It's easy for (us), but it might not be easy for them to earn up that money," said Mackley, who begins her first year at Smithsburg Middle School this fall.Thanks to Mackley, who lives in Smithsburg, Veronica's family has one less thing to worry about. In April, Mackley used her birthday money to help offset Veronica's school expenses.Mackley said she did it because she felt obligated to help her...
from the Daily PennsylvanianNatasha BandukwallaCraig Sinkinson, President and founder of the Mayan Medical Aid, a non-profit organization that funds medically related projects involving Mayan Indians, spoke at Civic House last night. He addressed the impact of maternal and childhood nutritional diseases during pregnancy and early childhood development.His speech was part of Healthy Philadelphia Week, which is sponsored by Civic House and works to build awareness of public health issues in the Philadelphia area.Sinkinson left the United States in 2004 to start a health clinic in a small village, Santa Cruz La Laguna, in Guatemala. This health initiative aims to improve the nutrition, primary health care and sanitation of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, Guatemala, while maintaining the...
from IPSInés BenítezSOLOLÁ, Guatemala, "Before forming part of the association, we were shut up in our houses. Now we have overcome our fear and shame of going out and seeing new places, and we are bringing money in for our families," says Nicolasa Raxtun, a 30-year-old Maya Cakchiquel Indian woman.In a house in Chuacruz, a village of 800 people in the Guatemalan region of Sololá, six indigenous women have gathered to tell IPS how their lives have been changed by joining the Aj Quen (which means "the weaver" in the Cakchiquel language) association of artisans.The association, which now has around 800 members, mainly women, was born in February 1989 on the initiative of representatives of organised groups of indigenous craftswomen from the southwestern regions of Sololá, Totonicapán...
from The Metro West Daily NewsWAYLAND -Shunned by society, children and their parents earn their living scavenging the dump in Guatemala City.Exposed to methane gas, pests and rodents, they pick among the garbage littered with broken glass and twisted metal for recycled material. Roughly 560 children, from babies to age 20, live with their families in shanty houses made of tin and corrugated cardboard that line the dump.Combining her passions for theater and resolving conflict, Wayland's Anna Hadingham helps preteens and teens in that area deal with another big problem plaguing the city - gangs.Through the nonprofit organization Safe Passage, the 22-year-old started a program last September to teach conflict resolution to children who live and work in Guatemala City's dump.To a group of...
from the Star Ledger Joe Collins celebrated with a soft drink. His 67th birthday. The construction of his 103rd house for the poorest of the poor in the Guatemalan highlands.And the continuing re-construction of his own life."I don't know what led me to this," says Collins. "I guess God did. I don't know, it's just ..."His voice trails off because this twice-divorced 6-foot-2 former Marine and saloon owner and recovering alcoholic and cancer survivor is not the sort comfortable with invoking divine intervention in his own life. Collins would think it presumptuous.But, after a round of Christmas fundraising, Collins is headed back down to the hot rain forests of the Central American country where, he estimates, some 1.6 million Mayan indigenous people live in shacks made of cornstalks or...
from the Chicago TribuneLatin nation tries to fight image as baby factory for the U.S.By Oscar AvilaTribune foreign correspondentGUATEMALA CITY — Maria Lorena will soon celebrate her first, and possibly last, birthday in her home country. In January, the 11-month-old infant will likely become yet another precious export to the U.S. when a Minnesota family adopts her.But U.S. and Guatemalan officials and child advocates worry that adoptions aren't just of value to the children and their prospective parents. Critics say a shadowy Guatemalan system has helped lawyers, middlemen—and even birth mothers—collect sizable payoffs.Under worldwide pressure, Guatemala is preparing to enact a law, currently being debated in the country's Congress, to add oversight and transparency to its...
from The Associated PressBy OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ – 9 hours agoGUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Alvaro Colom, a businessman promising to end Guatemala's desperate poverty, won the country's presidential election Sunday.Colom beat retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who conceded defeat after results from 97 percent of the vote showed him trailing Colom by 6 percentage points in the two-man runoff."I am the nation's president elect," Colom, of the center-left National Unity of Hope Party, told cheering supporters.Colom had nearly 53 percent of the vote, while Perez, of the conservative Patriotic Party, had 47, according to results published on Guatemala's Electoral Tribunal Web site.Electoral officials had not declared an official winner late Sunday but Perez acknowledged that Colom's lead was...
Discriminatory Bill Strips Rights of 40 Percent of Families
Guatemalan legislators should protect all families by voting against the “Integral Protection for Marriage and Family Act,” Human Rights Watch urged today in a letter to the Guatemalan Congress....
from the International Herald TribuneGUATEMALA CITY: Guatemalans were likely to send Sunday's presidential election to a November runoff between a conservative former general vowing to crack down on crime and a center-left businessman who promises social spending to alleviate desperate poverty.About 50 candidates, party activists and their family members were killed in the months leading to the election, underscoring public safety issues plaguing the Central American nation."I want things to change because there's too much violence and crime in my neighborhood," said Judith Orellana, a 32-year-old nurse, as she lined up before dawn Sunday for a polling station to open in her gang-invested neighborhood outside Guatemala City.Pre-election polls showed Otto Perez, the hard-line former...
The Guatemalan authorities should promptly and thoroughly investigate the killing of Josй Emanuel Mйndez Dardуn, the son of a prominent human rights advocate, Human Rights Watch said today....
Victims Concerned That Police May Have Been Responsible for These Crimes
The Guatemalan government must take immediate steps to stop a pattern of deadly attacks and possible police violence against transgender women and gay men, and end impunity for these crimes, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Guatemalan President Oscar Berger....