CONGRATULATIONS to all the Challengers on our first six Charity Challenges of 2011, biking from Guatemala to Honduras, the inaugural Nicaragua Volcano Challenge, Brazil's Chapada Diamantina Challenge , Guatemala's first Caribbean Kayak Challenge, Perú´s Cerani Pass and Ecuador's Volcano Challenge. Nicaragua's second volcano Challenge is set for 3rd-6th November and the third Guatemala Volcano Challenge dates are set for 27th November -2nd December.

Click on the following for our most recent official project reports for Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Perú and Brazil.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

GVI Phoenix Projects - our mission statement and ten miscellaneous facts for 2009

GVI Phoenix believes that education, both primary and secondary, as well as daily food, is a basic human right. As the World finally wakes up to shortcomings in education and uneven distribution of food supplies, over the past few years, GVI Phoenix has been attempting to combat these imbalances through GVI Phoenix volunteers and the GVI Charitable Trust.

In the communities in which we operate in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Perú, these basic rights are, quite simply, often not attainable as rising food prices across the board further pressure families, already past break-even, to make the decision of not what to eat and do for their children, though when to eat and how to educate their children.

Both these “rights” walk hand in hand: a hungry child cannot learn effectively. During 2009, GVI Phoenix volunteers and the GVI Charitable Trust will provide the following:

1) First time education or educational reinforcement to over 1,700 children.



2) Scholarships for primary education where education is not free (Guatemala) have exceeded 500 children who otherwise would not have been able to attend school due to financial constraints.


3) Almost 200 children and adults, aged between 12 and 23, will receive secondary education.


4) Over 130 local people will be employed directly or indirectly by GVI Phoenix projects.


5) Daily fixed journeys to and from our communities will almost touch 100,000km, throughout the year.


6) 10,000 trees will be planted and over 100 energy saving wood-burning stoves will be constructed.









7) Over 45,000 hours of teaching and 20,000 hours of lesson planning by volunteers!
8) Over 450,000 pieces of fruit will be distributed, as well as 350,000 whole or subsidized meals provided to the children.













9) Almost 500 “elderly” members of the community will be fed under the Plan Ancianos and over 100 families will benefit from the Plan Semilla (Seeds), Plan Fertilizante, Plan Moo (cows) and the Plan Pollo (live chickens).


10) On top of this, and previous volunteers can vouch for this, thousands of pens (lapiceros), pencils (lapices), pencil sharpeners (sacapuntas), colouring pencils (lapices de colores), work-books (cuadernos) and erasers (borradores) will be provided.


However, it is not all just one big hand-out. There must be a second party in all of this, and this is the families of the children themselves. They must sacrifice the extra pair of hands in the fields to allow the children to spend so much time in education.


The financial sacrifice of this for the family is large in comparison in the short-term, though in the long-term, it is an investment that GVI Phoenix, the GVI Charitable Trust and the families themselves believe will be worth it.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog is awesome, Dom. I can't wait to come down there!

Swati from New Orleans

Dom Williams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dom Williams said...

Dom here
Thanks so much for everyone's support over the last few years and here's to more years in the future. Just to let you know, for those who were wondering why the previous comment was deleted, it was actually a comment by me doing a test!!
cheers
Dom

Shanna said...

Dom,

Thank you so much for setting up this blog! It is so great to be able to keep up with all of the wonderful things that you guys have going on in Guatemala! I miss Guatemala and all of you so much!

Keep doing all that you guys do!

Shanna
PS, please tell Doreen Hello from me. =)

How does GVI Phoenix make a difference?

The following film was made in Guatemala, though the message is the same across all GVI Phoenix projects