Volunteers in the year 1999

Why the extension?

Several reasons: She loves working with the kids, which she does on a daily basis. She is making a contribution by helping poor Guatemalan children to more productive, more satisfying lives through education. She likes Antigua, a beautiful, historic city of flower-laden walls surrounded by green mountains and picturesque volcanoes. She daily watches development of the program’s new community center being built in San Felipe, a slums on the edge of Antigua.

And, she's helping expand a program beneficial to more and more needy people.

Hanley, who is from Maine, is a homeroom teacher as well as the director of curriculum for the program’s school. When she arrived in Guatemala, the project had about 600 students. Last school year, donations were large enough to pay school expenses for 725 boys and girls. This year the total jumped again, to 800.

Other programs have expanded as well. Last year, 3,100 residents from the slums and mountainsides around Guatemala were helped. This year that number will grow. In addition, ServiceTeams -- groups of volunteers, made up of individuals of all ages from different states and countries -- have built a number of homes for destitute families being assisted by The GOD'S CHILD Project. Several more ServiceTeams are scheduled in for two-week building bees this summer.

"There is real work to do here".

That's the summation of Margaret Pfeiffer, a long-time volunteer at the GOD'S CHILD project in Guatemala.

Margaret and her husband, Bob, leave their rural Minnesota home for about three months each winter to volunteer at The GOD´S CHILD Project-sponsored Central American program called the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados. Over the past four years they've done just about every kind of work, such as helping provide Christmas for thousands of destitute children in pueblos around Guatemala. They particularly enjoy handing out school supplies at the beginning of each year, as well as sorting medical supplies donated for the new medical clinic now being finished at Dreamer Center.

"Whatever it is, we do it for the Nuestros Ahijados program," says Margaret, who likes the fact that The GOD'S CHILD Project keeps its emphasis on educating kids. "Money goes to help the children, not toward financing some big-time, sophisticated charity".

Her personal high from volunteering? "Having mothers and children from the project give you a big hug when they see you on the local streets."

Bob and Bev Peterson started their volunteer efforts for The GOD'S CHILD Project in 1996. They finally visited one of the many projects sponsored by GOD´S CHILD, the Asociación Nuestros Ahijados, in San Felipe, Guatemala, a couple months ago.

In between are three years of dedicated effort by Bob and Bev to build a school for the poor whom are served by the program. The Petersons, plus the services of many, many Rotarians from across North Dakota, northern Minnesota, western Wisconsin and southern Ontario, Canada, and a number of volunteers who aren't Rotarians but are interested in helping poor Guatemalan children get proper education, made a dream become a reality.

Results are spectacular -- $80,000 in voluntary contributions is building an International Educational Center now being completed at the project's Dreamer Center in Guatemala, and a supply of desks and library file cabinets were handmade by the volunteers for the classrooms.

Bringing down those supplies are what finally brought Bob and Bev Peterson to Guatemala – to deliver 62 desks, plus cabinets and assorted medical equipment.

The desks were built for free, Under direction of Woodie Wolf, a program volunteer from North Dakota. Delivery was arranged for free through a high-quality shipping firm called The Expeditors, with transportation donated by trucking and shipping volunteers. Even Guatemalan customs officials waived most of the import fees because the desks were for a non-profit, charitable organization.