Mundo Exchange Volunteers in Guatemala
Mundo works with local Mayans and supports their self-defined community-based projects that focus on educational, medical and mental health services. Human rights, health, and safety statistics continue to be dismal in these areas. Through the country, an enduring and significant inequity between indigenous and non-indigenous people has always existed. The poverty levels in Guatemala remain higher than in any other Central American country.
Mundo Exchange has helped with mental health workshops, has provided nutritional meals for children, and leadership, tuition assistance, and women’s rights programs. We have also arranged for virtual cultural exchanges between children in the western world and Guatemala youth, have assisted by providing much needed school materials and have helped to purchase a vehicle to take community members to medical appointments and social service meetings in remote areas where violence of war continues to effect our Guatemalan friends.
At this time Mundo provides a few select internships that are coordinated with Guatemalan Mundo Exchange Treks. We continue to support Guatemalans who continue to suffer from the insidious post effects of long-term exposure to violence by providing financial educational and community development support. In 2009 we helped to bring a group of medical specialists to remote areas of Guatemala where the poverty is extreme. in 2010 and 2011 we helped to bring enthusiastic volunteers and students from Alaska, France, and both the Catlin Gable and Oregon Episcopal Schools.
To learn more about Mundo Exchange projects in Guatemala please contact Joan Williams, Executive Director of Mundo at joan@mundoexchange.org or call us in the US at 503-227-8442.
