- Guatemala
- Panajachel
About Program
This 7-day program is for families who want to introduce their children to service and global citizenship while being immersed in a new culture. Our goal is to explore the intersection of culture, history, and language of Lake Atitlán and it’s rural indigenous peoples with the contemporary challenges they face. We will work alongside families and children in the town of Santa Lucía Utatlán on development projects that address their need for improved nutrition, education and economic stability. Our program is based in Lake Atitlán. Each family stays together in a homestay, an ideal way to get to know how Guatemalans live. Families can brush up on their Spanish skills while having breakfast and dinner. After breakfast at our homestay, we visit cultural and historic sites that provide context and background. Afternoons are spent building kitchens in the rural communities around Santa Lucía while working side by side with community members on these authentic rural development projects.
Video and Photos
Program Highlights
- Family Service: Strengthen family bonds by working side-by-side with community members.
- Cultural Immersion: Dive into and get to know a new culture, language and people through activities, lectures and your homestay.
- Authentic Rural Development Projects: Work with rural indigenous communities to address the contemporary challenges they face.
- Global Citizenship: Share a sense of belonging to a common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, empathy, solidarity and respect.
Program Impact
Learn to navigate another culture with awareness and sensitivity. Gain capacities in navigating and understanding new cultures, using previously known skills in new ways. Learn about yourself & about others in the process of working together through projects. Begin to develop a sensibility to making a difference to, and in, the world. Form relationships and build community creating understanding between people for positive outcomes. Gain perspective on one’s own assumptions of the world, and to expand one’s understanding of it while gaining empathy.
