Sponsor a Child today!
Did you know that 11 million children die each year before the age of five - that is about 30,000 every day - because they have not received the care they deserve as a right. This dreadful reality must change.
content1
CCF Guatemala has been assisting children and their families since 1964. Currently, 37,000 children in 79 project locations are being served. Political unrest and economic difficulties derived from declining coffee prices and lack of basic crops continue causing problems in Guatemala. The international price of coffee has declined as much as 60% forcing many small and medium size farms out of business. Prolonged drought caused serious crop losses and starvation in 57 out of 325 counties in this country; 25 counties are in a state of emergency due to a lack of food. The lack of basic crops such as corn is not caused by drought conditions only. The price of imported crops is lower thus local crop production has diminished. Many families, sometimes entire communities, migrate to cash crop areas looking for seasonal labour. This year many seasonal jobs were lost due to low coffee prices and many coffee farmers could not afford harvesting costs and preferred to lose their crops. This combination of factors has put many poor rural families in a critical situation. CCF Guatemala is working with the Nutrition Institute of Central America and Panama (INCAP) to develop a food and nutrition security strategy. In addition, CCF Guatemala is assisting affected communities in some of the critical counties near programme areas. CCF Guatemala is also implementing a successful food enrichment programme based on the distribution of Rice X. This programme brings together the U.S. government (USDA), a private sector firm in Los Cerritos, California, which produces protein rich rice, the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture, and CCF Guatemala. Additionally, CCF Guatemala continues to focus on its community development initiatives put into place following decades of horrific violence in Guatemala. CCF Guatemala has trained 100 peace promoters that will serve their communities by educating people about child rights, the negative impact of violence at all levels and non-violent options for handling conflict. Women can take part in the CCF Guatemala micro-enterprise development programme. This family income-generating programme provides an important safety net to many Guatemalan families. Almost 200 children in Guatemala are sponsored through ChildFund Ireland.
