Guatemala

Update From The Infamous Zone 18

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When you support When I Grow Up, you are supporting our friends in Guatemala. Today we hear from our friend Jose who is working with Pastor Alex to provide food, water, and resources to Zone 18 in Guatemala City.

The need is great.

You are providing water.

Water.

You are providing life to people around the world with your donations.

As you give, you are encouraging others. Let’s keep going.

Give today to empower our partners from around the world.

Next Week!

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Next week. It’s YOUR time to give.

From November 1-5th you can SPEND a week hearing from our partners, as we share their stories on social media and enews. Then do your part and GIVE to continue the work that is happening in Kenya, Guatemala, and in Haiti.

Be part of helping our partners with your financial contributions so our partners can do the amazing things they do, so more children can be cared for, so the movement grows, and evil is held back, and Christ is known.

It’s your time, join us next week… let’s all do all we can to see children empowered out of extreme poverty.

Reminder: Love In Action

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…Your generosity, your prayers remind our dear friends that they are not alone and they are not abandoned. Your giving is love in action – in a profound and live-giving way…”

Watch below to see how your giving is changing lives

As June begins the amazing relief work of the Furaha team and the Go Guatemala Team push on with energy and determination.

The relief work is being led by amazing people. In Guatemala it’s spearheaded by a wonderful retired gentleman and in Kenya young college students lead the work to walk the alleys and bring blessed relief supplies.

All are our heroes.

Nairobi, Kenya and Guatemala City remain in lockdown with curfew.

The poor remain unable to work and with no work there is no money. No money = no food.

In Jacob and Palma, Haiti the school is closed and the teachers are all quarantined in Hinche (the main city near the school).

Like Kenya and Guatemala, in Haiti the Covid virus means everything remains closed down and life is even more just about survival!

And that’s where you come in! Your generosity, your prayers remind our dear friends that they are not alone and they are not abandoned. Your giving is love in action – in a profound and life-giving way.

Thank you.

While we all struggle with so much happening around us – and the fear, the anxiety, the tiredness it causes us – you are continuing to go beyond yourself to be a blessing to so many children and their families.

We remain humbly grateful.

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Those Pesky Mosquitoes! May 2018 Updates

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“If you think you are too small to make a difference…try sleeping with a mosquito in the room!”

Ouch!

I’ve been there. Done that. Glad my malaria medicine was working. BUT for many people they have no medicines and every 30 seconds a child dies from a mosquito bite!

Tragic.

Standing with our global partners can be as simple as a $10 donation to pay for malaria meds, or $30 to buy a mosquito net for them to sleep under.

No one and nothing is too small to make a difference.

Donate $30 Today


Furaha High School new dormitory – with comfy beds!

Most of us have a room to sleep in, a bed to sleep on and we don’t have mosquitoes infecting us. For the students of Furaha High School, most have no bed at home, no bedrooms at home and there are mosquitoes all around.

The High School is the first place they will have a bed of their own – and have a mosquito net!

Go on – buy a brick or a bed and help empower some amazing students out of extreme poverty. Graduating students can pull their entire family out of extreme poverty.

Click here to watch the video and learn more!


Urgent Prayer Needed for Guatemala

It seemed like a step forward. the Guatemala government pulled their army soldiers off the streets as a sign of peace and progress. BUT – in Zone 18 where Esperanza para Guatemala are working, this is having serious ramifications.

The soldiers were the force that kept the zone from erupting in gang battles and daily gun deaths.

People are nervous, tense, waiting.

Pray a particular protection for Jose, his family and the staff and children of Esperanza.


Thank you all for being difference makers!

When I Grow Up News April 2018

Latest Updates from our Global Partners – April 2018

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At When I Grow Up, we exist to ensure no child in the world needs to live in extreme poverty.

We do this through behaving with relational intelligence, dedication and valuing meaningful relationships with our global partners.

Our action focuses on raising resources for funding and friendship to share with our global partners who are on the frontlines of helping children who live in circumstances of extreme poverty.

We are a village, because we know it takes a village. Our team is global including our global partner friends in Guatemala, Haiti, and Kenya. Our local partners are in California, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Scotland.

In 2017, forty-two WIGU local partners traveled 79,114 miles to visit our global partners and share friendship and support.

Our supporters delivered on their best year to date in donating and investing in the work we do.

$657,810 was raised to help our global partners. Through individual donors, church support, fundraising events, and grants awarded, people gave generously believing in our mission and vision.

A total of 473 people, churches, companies and organizations stood with us in giving and investing in empowering children out of extreme poverty.

That’s over $1,800 raised every, single, day!

The focus of our work is on partnering with three amazing Global Partners who do life-changing daily, front-line work.

  • Furaha Community Foundation, Huruma slum, Nairobi, Kenya
  • Esperanza para Guatemala, Zone 18, Guatemala City, Guatemala
  • Bethesda Center Foundation, Palma and Jacob, Haiti

    Together they teach and care for 1,640 children and a total of 9,130 people receive regular help from our global partners in the form of school education, health care, daily feeding programs, weekly food supplies, micro-business interest free loans, church involvement, job training, work support, university grants and safe-house care.

    At the center of each global partner’s work is education.
    The education is wrapped around with feeding programs, health care, social care, spiritual nourishing, guardian empowering, safe house protections, job training, post High School education and community development.

    What’s Ahead in 2018

    Every year our global partners do more, help more, care more and love more. It’s our joy – and challenge – to keep up with all they are doing to change the lives of more and more children.

    Our biggest project to date is underway at Furaha Community Foundation. We are helping them build a new 240-bed dormitory for the High School students.

    This is a huge project – $300,000 huge!

    But as always we know our supporters and friends will help us raise it and see the Furaha High School students have the safe, warm, hygienic and quality dormitory they deserve.

    Click here to watch the video and learn more!

    Other News and Projects

    • In Haiti we also want to finish building their High School classrooms. But it’s more than bricks and mortar. Every day we provide 1,610 meals. We help over 90 staff provide for their families and develop their careers. We train 22 Pastors.
    • In 2018 Esperanza para Guatemala will start Phase One of a new Primary School.
    • We now have over 60 Furaha students studying at university or college.
    • Three safehouses are operating to protect most-at-risk children.
    • Last year textbooks were provided for every school student.
    • Esperanza have started a new program for 50 additional at-risk children from two local schools, three other schools will join in later in 2018.
    • In partnership with the Gnu Foundation there are over 240 micro-businesses running.
    • Furaha Primary won National Championship in arts and dance; top three in academics out of 120 schools; the Furaha High School was 5th out of 48 schools in their district.

    The amazing reality is that through our global partners, your support and investment with us helps 15,065 people every week!

    Travel in 2018

    Join us on in visiting one of our global partners. We have trips in the works for June, August, September, January, and February. We go to be, not to do. Learn more about traveling with us.

    Interested in visiting our global partners in 2018?
    Email carrie@whenigrowup-global.com and find out dates, costs and expectations!

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Children Abandoned But Not Alone!

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Esperanza para Guatemala sits in the middle of Zone 18 of Guatemala City. It’s a zone filled with 900,000 people and infamous for its gun violence and its poverty.

If the people already lived in fear, that fear was compounded earlier this summer when several earthquakes hit the city. Poorly built houses shaking due to multiple earthquakes increases the fear. Jose Armas, the leader of Esperanza, emailed us immediately to share that people were ok but scared.

A week later a second email comes from Jose. This time it’s different. As many children are eating breakfast in the Esperanza daily breakfast program, a desperate, hurting mother calls to tell Jose she is leaving town seeking a better life in the US – and her 5 children that Esperanza are presently feeding – she’s leaving them and asking Esperanza to look after them!

Wow!
Already these children have seen their father desert them. Now they are left completely alone.
It’s what poverty does.
It drives people to the edge.
It forces people to make impossible choices.

Jose and the Esperanza Team stepped up. They trace down the grandmother who is already caring for 7 children and with the help of a local pastor and with Esperanza’s commitment, there is now a family of 12 children plus an aged grandmother being held and helped together with Esperanza’s commitment to children and families.

It’s a day in the life of families and children who live in extreme poverty. Chaos. Pain.
It’s a day in the life of Esperanza para Guatemala. Chaos, Pain. Being Jesus.
Beauty in Zona 18.

new preschool in guatemala

A New Preschool in Guatemala

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Esperanza Para Guatemala, Zona 18, Guatemala City

Jose Armas is a leader who makes things happen. The starting of a preschool in Esperanza is an exciting new development. Based in the heart of Zone 18 the preschool will become a haven for lots of children growing up surrounded by gangs, violence and poverty – a terrible mixture. Esperanza’s team of gifted and dedicated Guatemalans will begin this new venture with love and hope.

We are excited to see this begin alongside the growing vocational, agricultural and business ventures Jose is leading Esperanza to undertake in 2016.

You Can Make A Difference

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Poverty is a brutal cycle that billions are trapped in. But we believe that not only CAN this change, but that it WILL. And YOU can make a difference.

Guatemala Feeding Program – Guatemalans Helping Guatemalans

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Learn how Esperanza Para Gutamela’s feeding program helps thousands of people in need in Zone 18 of Guatemala City.

When They Grow Up – Part 3

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We asked a few of the children from Esperanza Para Guatemala, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Here are their answers.