Carita Feliz

In a community just outside of Guatamala’s Quetzaltenango, the riverbeds in the area are clogged with trash, as it is the easiest means of garbage disposal. Children are born to young mothers and often the fathers abandon their families. These single mothers do manual labor in factories, working in unsuitable and dangerous areas for small children. The only options then are for the children to be left at home or with family, as there is no public daycare facility and a private school would cost twenty dollars a month; this is completely unaffordable. Often times the children must start working, often in the building and transporting of cement blocks. A cycle of poverty has been firmly established. The struggle to survive and lack of quality public education leads children into the same dead-end low paying jobs their parents and grandparents had. They start families too early, and the cycle repeats. There is no outside assistance; I was the first volunteer in the community in two years. A daycare, called Carita Feliz or Happy Face, is run in the extra room of a house belonging to a charitable woman named Melva. All of its supplies and funding were removed by the government and if the community cannot afford to pay a teacher’s monthly salary by January, the facility will be closed completely. After seeing firsthand the struggle of the community and school, I was moved to raise money from friends and family to pay for food, tables, and chairs for the daycare. Starting by organizing my good-hearted peers at the George Washington University, I believe that by exposing others to the strife faced by these children we can make Carita Feliz a successful daycare and perhaps give the community a pathway out of poverty through education.