Provide fresh water for poor girls in Guatemala

Thank you for your support, we are nearly there!

Thanks to your online support and additional offline donations, we are so much closer to installing the submersible pump for the well at our Sisters of Mary girls' school in Zona 13, Guatemala.

We anticipate being able to update you with pictures of the completed project within a few months. 

The need

The need for clean water is urgent. We are well into the dry season in Guatemala and retrieving water from the well is difficult without a pump. The pump will make a marked difference to the day to day lives of the girls in the education programmes. It will help the school to be cost effective and sustainable and give it independence from the city's unreliable and costly water supply. 

If you haven't seen the well site yet, watch Sister Magdalena talk about the need for a well pump. 

The cost of buying clean water is high with the cost of living and basic goods rising dramatically in Guatemala. The total operating cost of the Guatemala programmes has risen by 14% in 2022.

Keeping up with basic costs like food and clothing for the exisiting students is challenging. The funds saved by completing the well will help to meet these rising costs, as well as funding more school places for additional poor girls from this country. 

Poor families in Guatemala are finding life more and more desperate as jobs are lost and the price of food rises. Guatemala imports a lot of its food and rising import costs mean that poor families and children are suffering the most from the global cost of living increases. 

Education to give Guatemalan girls the chance to find employment after school is the best hope these families have for a life out of poverty. 

New students

Attached you will see images of new students who we welcomed into Zona 13 in January 2023. These girls have faced incredible barriers to education in the past few years. Many of them will have missed out on more than two years of primary education due to school closures during the pandemic. Almost all of the new students need additional support and tutoring to help them catch up to the academic standards for their year group.

Thanks to the dedication of the teaching staff at Zona 13, as well as the Sisters' perseverance and the girls' determination, they are making progress. With additional funds freed up once the well is running, more support can be provided for children who have suffered missed education during the pandemic years. 

Offline donations

You will see that the total amount needed for the project has moved from £19,012 to £8,000. This is to reflect offline donations which cannot be added to GlobalGiving. So in order to reflect the true amount still needed, we have moved the goal down to show more accurately how our fundriasing is going. 

Thank you! 

So thank you again for your continued support and interest in the lives of our girls in Guatemala. Your donations will give them better quality of life while they complete their education and hope for a brighter future.