It is under this tin roof that Misión Desafío currently cares for children living in zone 3 of Guatemala City’s central landfill.
ANTICIPATED LIVES IMPACTED: 160 total including elementary and secondary students as well as members of the community.
GRANT AMOUNT $88,947 from ARDF while the church will contribute another $3,250.
HOW YOU CONTRIBUTED!
$5,150 outfited the kitchen with a stove and cookware that will supply children with a nutritious meal.
$9,200 supplied 10 computers for the school.
$10,700 covered the salaries of five builders and one master builder.
GLOBAL TRUSTEES APPROVED November 2021
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Overview
Misión Desafío, of the Anglican Church of Guatemala, serves a community of about 510 families who survive off whatever they scavenge from within the Guatemala City landfill. The church offers tutoring and breakfast for 120 to 150 children each day. Weekly church services are attended by about 100 people.
With ARDF funding, church leaders seek to construct a Community Outreach Center that will serve the approximate 3,400 residents of the landfill. Current programs take place underneath a sheet of corrugated metal.
Impact
Being located in an actual building will strengthen the existing programs that now take place outdoors. These programs currently include a wide range of services, such as feeding breakfast to the community, tutoring children, and medical support by visiting nurses. Weekly church services and trauma counseling for those who have undergone domestic violence and other traumas are also held outdoors. This building will also allow the church to start new programs. Plans are under way to start a Christian primary school for 120 students beginning in 2023.
In addition to physical impact, the spiritual and emotional impact of this project has been incredible. Our partners report that:
many people and NGOs have offered many promises to these families, only to have them ultimately fall-though. These “false-starts,” so to speak, have deeply wounded our families and their already difficult trust issues have only grown deeper. But in seeing and touching the walls and support columns everyday has severed, symbolically, as a kind of medicine for their souls! It sparked a new willingness to have confidence in the Lord and in those sent in His name. It was been such a blessing to see!
“Dana and Damaris are impacting the poorest of the poor. If that ministry did not exist, what would happen is that the parents would go out to work and leave the kids locked up with a padlock behind the door in a (small) room. … The big kids of 6 or 7 years old (are) taking care of the little ones and seeing what they have or not have to eat. They make that impact in the lives of those children. They have years of serving in a place where no one else wants to be.”
— Leonardo Rosales, founder of WOT Dev, a local business, and a donor to Misión Desafío
— Leonardo Rosales, founder of WOT Dev, a local business, and a donor to Misión Desafío
Updates
Our partners are especially thankful for the fidelity of their day-laborers. These workers know that the project will positively affect their mothers, sisters, and wives, and as such are serious about their work. In addition, when the project is complete, the community will have several new competent construction workers who will be able to better care for their families as they obtain higher-paying jobs.
One unanticipated problem was the extent of the outside communities prejudice against those living in the landfill. Vendors and contractors continually refused to deliver supplies into the area, forcing our partners to find other ways of transporting supplies and materials.
This project has been completed and we are awaiting a final report.
Prayer Requests
Please pray for Rev. Dana Craft and his congregation in Guatemala City. He and several of the members have contracted Dengue fever and are currently very ill.