Support from the Kittery-based Evelyn S. and K.E. Barrett Foundation, as well as the D.H. Ross Foundation, help New Gloucester nonprofit, Safe Passage, implement an early educational pilot program in one of the most impoverished areas of Guatemala City.
The Guardería, or nursery, opened in June with 20 students and plans to add 20 more in 2023. The goals are to reach children at an earlier age with comprehensive health and family services, to engage young impoverished mothers in need of family services and support, and to prepare students for primary school, according to a news release from Safe Passage.
According to Safe Passage Executive Director Trae Holland, this new nursery program is key as “it is important to intervene in a child’s life, especially those who are living in a very traumatic environment such as our students.”
Supporters are invited to a live event, showing the newly opened Guardería and existing Pre-K on Friday, Aug. 12. The event will be hosted on the organization’s blog at safepassage.org/blog, starting at 11 am EST.
Safe Passage was founded in 2000 by Maine native, Hanley Denning, who grew up in Yarmouth and attended Greely and Bowdoin. After traveling to Guatemala in the late 1990’s to learn Spanish, she saw the plight of the hundreds of families living in and around the garbage dump in Guatemala City – among the largest in Central America — and decided to stay and help the children who worked with their parents scavenging the dump. What first started as a small drop-in center, eventually turned into a fully accredited school that serves pre-K through 9th grade and now includes nutrition, health care, literacy, college preparation, and job training, among other services, to over 600 students and their families in the Guatemala City garbage dump community.
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