The Child in Guatemala

I’m a firm believer in spiritual leaders. Personally, I need them; I seek them out, read their books, breathe their messages into my pores. I have to have mentors to keep me sane while working in Guatemala, a country of insane poverty, gender inequality and scholastic inadequacy. All of our board members are people of wisdom and seekers, some through church work, some through service work, others via role models. We understand the need for collaboration and guidance. 

Iyanla Vanzant (L) (Iyanla’s blog) is one of my favorite life coaches. Her wisdom comes from a combination of seeking, immersion, and the hardest education of all….tragedy.  She knows at her core of the pain a mother feels when she suffers the loss of a child. Iyanla “gets” the relationship humans must have in order for this planet we inhabit to be a home we can grow up on instead of grow out of in this  current atmosphere of international conflict.

Iyanla believes that there is one name for each child in our world. Not the name Jane, or Jack, but rather the name Everychild. 
Each child in the world is everychild. He or she doesn’t belong to just their particular country, or village or even parents. They belong to all of us, just like each woman and each man belongs to everyone else in the world. We are connected. Our joys, sorrows, success or lack of is intertwined. 
In other words, everychild’s concerns are our own concerns. 

Sandra’s life has been reduced to sleeping in the dirt

This is Sandra. She used to live in a house, on land owned by her parents, with a roof that didn’t leak, food that was on the table at night and a bed to sleep in. Now she sleeps on the floor you see her standing on, which belongs to a relative who allows the family to rest there at night. 
Sandra’s father wanted more for his family than the small income he made scratching out a living harvesting crops in Guatemala. He became one of the several million Central American men who risk life and limb to cross our border seeking work. And that is what it cost him-two limbs and a foot, when he fell off of the train as it crossed into Mexico. He is still in the hospital months later, his land and house now gone to pay the coyote fee for the unsuccessful journey. 
We met with Sandra and her mother last week. We listened to her story, heard her despair, gave her a months worth of food, some pain medication (the hospital had none) and offered her the more nebulous item called “hope.”
We will  help her find a room to rent and purchase a bed to put her newly disabled husband on when he comes home. FFF found a school sponsor for Sandra. We will, within our ability to do so, make her concerns our own until the burden of her troubles feels lighter.
Sandra is everychild. Her mother is everywoman. Her father, with only one functional limb, is everyman. No child should be homeless and hungry, no matter what country they live in. There are enough resources and enough humanitarians in this world for the everychilds to be helped by everyone who desires to make the power of connection create positive change.