Bring Light: Help Create an Environmental Oasis for the Children of Los Cimientos

PROJECT

Help Create an Environmental Oasis for the Children of Los Cimientos

Los Cimientos Alliance

The natural land around our center is being developed and destroyed. Help save our agriculture and ecology study program for troubled youth in Maya Kiche community of Los Cimientos and in the village of San Lucas Toliman, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.

Number of Donations: 6 | Posted 10 months ago


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6 donations so far!

Target: $27,000.00
Raised so far: $1,415.00

The Charity

Los Cimientos Alliance

Health, Education, and Mediation

Bring Light Activity

6 Donors

1 Project since October, 2007

1 Active Project since December, 2007

Charity Info

Based in: Carmel, California

Year founded: 1991

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Project Info

For many years the Los Cimientos Alliance, a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization located in Monterey California, provided humanitarian support and human rights advocacy to the Maya K’iche community of Los Cimientos in El Quiche, Guatemala. Our Web-Page at www.livezone.com/maya tells the story of the struggle for the people of Los Cimientos survive and our 14 years of work with their community.

During this time we observed that the needs of children and teenagers were being ignored. There was and is, an escalating problem of young people joining violent youth gangs. There are few job opportunities. Much local crime is poverty driven, a result of desperate economic circumstance.

Then in Oct 2005, Tropical Storm Stan caused a nation wide environmental disaster, much of it due to deforestation. The death toll was high. In the village near us, the majority of the dead were children. Immediately local poverty increased, robberies increased dramatically. We started a pilot project working with youth in San Lucas Toliman and San Vicente de Los Cimientos to teach them how to maintain a healthy, productive environment and to provide educational and economic opportunities.

We pay work/study stipends for young Promoter Trainees to learn and teach environmental principals while improving economic conditions in their homes. Central focus of our program is a large organic garden and miniature diversified forest on our land base in San Lucas - K’aslem Mandala Environmental Education Center.

$27,000 IS NEEDED TO BUY LAND FOR THE CENTER AND TO CREATE A SMALL ENVIRONMENTAL OASIS.
Much of our agriculture and ecology study program takes place on a small piece of land in the middle of a large, once magnificently forested plantation. The land is protected by Environmental laws in Guatemala since it is a biological migration corridor; however, the laws are ignored. In this particular case, the landowners that are benefiting from the sale of the harvested trees and building lots are among Guatemala’s wealthier families. In a country lacking all resources to protect human lives – infractions of environmental laws are easily ignored and are completely unenforceable.

The once forested village of San Lucas beside the shore of Lake Atitlan is rapidly being stripped of all natural features and divided into tiny lots. All the land around K’aslem Center is being divided into 9 x 30 meter building lots. Each lot costs about $3,000 plus registration costs. The lots are unaffordable for most local buyers and are unattractive for outside investors yet young people of San Lucas are watching their world being stripped to dusty earth, destined to become a cement jungle of poor and angry people

We need to buy land around us in order to keep K’aslem Center viable and establish a small oasis, a protected nature reserve and free camping ground as a teaching center for children around Lake Atitlan. We need $27,000 for the basic purchase of the land that will protect K’aslem Center.

Additionally, we would like to help save some of the natural rock structures that make this area unique in its beauty. Among the rock structures is a mound that strongly resembles a small Mayan temple buried under natural rubble. This is an area where ancient Mayan culture flourished with the T’ztujil Maya thousands of years ago. If there are people interested in sponsoring the preservation of some of the rock formations we will gladly provide any information they need to rescue the land.