Niños de Guatemala

by Lidia Climent Martínez

Niños de Guatemala (NDG) is an NGO that was founded in 2006 by Dutch students and Guatemalan residents to contribute to a better future for Guatemala through education. It tries to achieve this goal by starting or supporting small-scale community projects, with a focus on education and other youth-related projects.

Our vision

We approach our projects from three perspectives:

• Education: We use a broad universal concept that includes not only general knowledge but also values and skills to allow each child to develop as a full and independent individual.
• Local community: NDG’s strength is that its projects seek the involvement of the whole community, not only the children at school.
• Self-sufficiency: NDG’s objective is the independence of all its projects.

School in Ciudad Vieja

Our main project is a school in Ciudad Vieja. Only 15 minutes from La Antigua, Ciudad Vieja is a whole different story. There are only two public schools for its 32,000 inhabitants and a great part of the population lives in slums on the volcano slope. The illiteracy rate is high and most of the children can’t go to school since they have to help bring some money home.

NDG’s school, Nuestro Futuro, offers quality education during the morning and artistic programs in the afternoon, so the children don’t have to stay in the streets. We also offer adults literacy courses and activities for the whole community.
We have recently opened our library and community center, which we hope will become a space for dialogue and opportunity for all.

How to help

You can become a padrino and sponsor one of our children. That would pay for his/her tuition, all the materials and part of the teacher’s wage. But, most importantly, you could be the encouragement that these kids lack at home, since their parents do not know what the challenges of studying are.

You could come and enjoy our weekly “Experience Guatemala” tour, where we will take you to our school, the slums where the families live and two of the most important businesses in Ciudad Vieja: a mechanical shop that refurbishes buses and an handmade coffin shop. The tour finishes with a snack prepared by the mother of one of our students.

You could become a volunteer and help us at the office in Antigua or at the school.

Contact

Lidia Climent Martínez, tel: 5416-3078, lidia@ninosdeguatemala.org, or stop by our office at 4a calle oriente #41, La Antigua (inside the Casa Convento Concepción), tel: 7832-8033. You can also learn more at www.ninosdeguatemala.org