In Guatemala, many young children suffer from severe malnutrition, resulting in developmental delays and lifelong disorders.

Question: How many times do you eat each day or week?

“Being at the program changed my life!” says Naomie. Before we reached her, Naomie and her three daughters had been scrounging out their survival for two years at a Kenyan garbage dump. Back then, she recalled, Naomie and the children went hungry most weeks; sometimes they would have nothing to eat for a whole day and night.

Little Loise from Kenya has suffered much hardship in her young life. She was born with HIV/AIDS and became an orphan when both her parents died of the disease. She was taken in by her elderly grandmother, who was poverty-stricken and unable to work much. Because she struggled to feed Loise regularly, this beautiful little girl went hungry. Their situation was desperate, and Loise could easily have died from the combination of HIV and malnutrition.

We have a valued partner in Puebla, Mexico who focuses on rescuing children from sexual exploitation. These victims have suffered terrible abuse, chronic neglect, and/or total abandonment. When we can rescue them from the evil clutches of exploitation on the streets, we can set them on a path toward thriving and prepare them to be all God has planned for them to be!

It was a double portion of blessing! Not only did you help meet a HUGE food need in Kenya, but the effort united the region's pastors—many of whom did not trust or endorse each other.

COVID-19 has reached Guatemala. Businesses are shut down. Necessities are sparse. While it sounds all too familiar to the crisis those of us in the US and other Western nations are facing, the difference is that in Guatemala, starvation is an immediate threat. Most workers live day to day with their meager earnings. Guatemala already had a high malnutrition rate of 50%, and when suddenly most of the jobs available to the poor are gone, the threat of starvation is immediate, even if many don’t have that emaciated, long-term hunger look we’re accustomed to seeing in places like Sudan, Africa, for example.