Child Aid helps create educational and economic opportunity for desperately poor indigenous children in Latin America. Working with local partners, we have established 35 libraries in Guatemala’s impoverished Central Highlands and have brought hundreds of thousands of books to communities that lack the most basic resources.
Our core program is Reading for Life, the result of over 16 years of library and literacy work in Guatemala. The program is based on our experience that bricks-and-mortar projects alone do not result in educational advancement for children. We combine our book donations with training for librarians and teachers, helping them become catalysts for literacy in their communities.
We focus on Guatemala because the country has the lowest literacy rate in Latin America. In the indigenous areas where we work, over 75% of the women cannot read beyond the simplest of words. In this country – beautiful beyond words but plagued by poverty – the inability to read represents a nearly impenetrable barrier to improving one’s life.
