These were representatives of the different municipalities in the Department of Solola.
They came to ask for our help. Their concern was the great problem of malnutrition amongst children.
They had a list of 149 children who were in danger of dying from severe malnutrition.
They asked us if we could just help these 149 children with food. They had been able to help them a little but they needed on going help.
As I looked over the list of children they had printed out, there were children at different levels of malnutrition.
The worst was coming to children who had a line drawn through their name and the word deceased next to it.
What is the matter with this world that we cannot work out how to feed these children ???
They were very excited when they saw the bags of Feed My Starving Children and Kids Against Hunger. We said that we would try our best to make sure that these 149 families were included when we next get bags of food. We are very grateful to our friend, Tom Heaton from Mission Guatemala who shares this food with us and to Peg Meyer and Corlene Horan who work so hard to help us get boxes of food into Guatemala.
It was a good meeting....one young man told us that they had worked out that a family who had 10 children and the father only earned 30 quetzales a day ...would only have something like 62 centavos to spend on each child for food for that day. ...That will not even buy one egg.
He also said that he saw the main cause of poverty being the lack of family planning. He talked about the two different sides of the reality that people live in...they have the physical side where having too many children can cause a great hardship for the family...and the spiritual side that teaches them that having a lot of children is a great blessing.
It was a thought provoking meeting ...and it was so good to see so many young people concerned about the children and having such a strong desire to make a difference in their community and the future of Guatemala. I hope we can help them. We just need to get some containers of food here!
Sharon
MAYAN FAMILIES
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