2010 NEWS FROM PLENTY AUSTIN
Guatemala City Dump Relief
Help for Grupo de Soya Santa Maria
This past November 2009 Plenty representatives met with a newly forming organization called Grupo de Soya Santa Maria (GSSM). These men and women requested assistance to initiate a food/nutrition supplementation, employment development and community service program for children, mothers and families who eke out a living pulling recyclable waste materials out of the largest waste dump in Central America. The "Relleno Sanitario" is located on the boarder of Zonas 3&7 in Guatemala City Guatemala.
There has been a significant drought in Guatemala during the last three years, and undernourishment for the most vulnerable populations, the very young and elderly, is on the rise. More and more people are moving to the urban areas in hopes of finding some form of work that will make it possible to pay for costs of food, shelter, health care and education for themselves and families. People who come to the zona 3-7 dump to work, spend their days pulling out rotten tires, plastic, metal, scrap wood, castaway food, and any other small or large thing that may be sold. They earn an average of $2-5.00US/day for their long, extremely difficult and dangerous work. Hospital waste, industrial chemicals and the commercial and residential trash from the city are all thrown into this dump. Approximately 3-4,000, mostly indigenous Mayan, people work there, up to 80% being women. Many of those working have children helping them, either at their small plastic, wood and metal shanty with the younger children, or scavenging for articles that can be sold. A very high number of the children and adults living at the "Relleno Sanitario" are undernourished.
Karen's Soy Nutrition Project (KSNP) is a nutrition supplementation and education project that will help create sustainable jobs for women and men who will be preparing and distributing high nutrient foods to children whose parents do not earn enough from their hard labor to provide for all of the family's basic needs. Karen Heikkala, who was chair person of Plenty's Board of Directors before loosing her life to cancer last July, had visited the project area during a trip to Guatemala in 2007. Before leaving us last summer she expressed her hope that Plenty could do something to help children and families living at the Relleno Sanitario.
The idea for this project first originated several years ago with Jorge Gonzalez and Father Bill Allard, a Jesuit priest who had ministered to the people at the Zona 3-7 dump before he died, and who had recruited Jorge to help him understand and work with families living in that area of Guatemala City. Jorge Gonzalez has been a friend and collaborator with Plenty representatives since he was a teenager, when a major earthquake struck Guatemala in 1976. During November of 2009 Mr. Gonzalez, several women from Templo Del Carmen, and Padre Paulino, the local priest and administrator, invited representatives from Plenty, who were in the country at the time, to visit the dump area with them.
They wanted to discuss what could be done to address the serious nutrition needs of children, and at the same time create employment opportunities for people living next the zona 3-7 dump. After reviewing information gathered from the site visits and meetings during November, Plenty's Board agreed to help the church affiliated Grupo de Soya Santa Maria (GSSM) seek resources they would need to start and sustain a food supplementation, nutrition education, and employment development project. GSSM decided to name the project after Karen Heikkala, because she had encouraged and led Plenty to find some way to help these extremely economically impoverished children and families.
Funding collected for the new initiative will be used to:
a) provide a high nutrient corn-soy milk drink (atole) and baked snack food for 300+ children, 3 days a week;
b) help the local partners purchase equipment and create job opportunities by initiating sales of quality foods within the surrounding communities; and,
c) support our partners efforts to develop the food processing and program management skills they will need to sustain food supplementation and nutrition education services for those children and families living off the dump.
If you have any questions, or would like to help in any way, please contact Thomas Heikkala at 512-462-1486, or tomas_heikkala@yahoo.com.
