January 7, 2016 Corbin Rose

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Hope Renewed: Children of the Guatemala City Dump

After a sad farewell to our lovely children at Eagle’s Nest, we headed back to Guatemala City to meet up with the pre-school aged children that live in and around the Guatemala City dump.  

These children live in extreme poverty, frequent danger, and with little hope of education, or a bright future.  Most of their parents are illiterate and work day and night in the dump trying to salvage anything they can repurpose and resell to make a living. Vultures circle above; and flies swarm below... the smells of rotting trash, carcasses, and sewage become normal.

While the Guatemalan government provides schooling up to 6th grade; most of these kids are raised with illiterate parents and are not educated enough to keep up. Hope Renewed is an organization that has set up a school for the children who live and sometimes work in the dump and who would otherwise not have a fighting chance to succeed in education.

Our group met up with Jeff of Hope Renewed and started our experience at a cemetery adjacent to the dump to get an overview of the area and what Hope Renewed has done and plans to do in the future as God provides the resources to accomplish them.

We did not take pictures of the living conditions these children experience, out of respect, but it was a good reminder that Americans take so much for granted. While many of these children are forced to work in the dump, there is a hope for them now that they have the ability to go to a school built in their community.

The following is a picture of the upper floor of the school:


 
Our team put together several hours of activities for the pre-school kids, and also invited some of the older kids from the community.  Shown below is one of the older children that stopped by: 



We started off activities with face painting, sidewalk chalk and parachute games.  The kids soon started painting the volunteers as well:

 

Other activities included rocket balloons, hula-hoop games, bouncy balls, balloon popping relays (via the kids sitting on them) and miscellaneous dance parties!  After quite a while of this, we paused for a snack break:
  


After the snack break, a water balloon fight erupted as a grand finale to the adventures for the children. We were informed that several of the children were very nervous about their first day of school, but our activities helped break the ice (or water balloons) for them!

Following is the aftermath of some of the aquatic adventures - smearing the existing face and arm painting:
 


Our team gathered funds for school supplies for Hope Renewed, which was much needed, and there is a potential for helping them with their website as well. Hopefully we can continue the relationship with Hope Renewed and with these lovely children!