Following are the dog outfit measurements:

• SMALL: length is 8 to 10 inches, trunk 11 to 14 inches, and neck 8 to 10 inches
• MEDIUM: length is 11 to 13 inches, trunk 13 to 16 inches, and neck 10 to 12 inches

It can be very satisfying to see your dog jump, play and rest in an original dog outfit.

Visit our You Tube channel for details and samples of dog outfits. Interested donors may email RWI at info@rootsandwingsintl.org to receive a dog outfit.

One exciting development is that the Technology Center will be hooked up to Pasac’s brand new sewer system and treatment plant—the first of its kind in the region. This addition will allow the Technology Center to have its own back-up septic system. The construction of the sewage treatment plant is scheduled to begin August 15, 2010.

The vast majority of Guatemala’s cities and towns have no waste water treatment systems, and sewage contaminates most rivers and streams.

Change lives through education. Click here to sponsor a student.

Just this past February, RWI was awarded the $100K funding by TECO Energy.

You can view more photos of the first stages of the construction project on Tech Center photos and on the website of architect firm The Global Studio.

Last year we added 5 corporate partners and grew our volunteer base from 2 to over 15. The growth of our organization is dependent upon the hard work invested by our dedicated team of volunteers. We launched a revamped website in December, and we have created more ways for donors to contribute towards our cause, such as naming a scholarship after a business or loved one, automatic monthly recurring donations through our website, and making online purchases through our GoodSearch toolbar. We have also expanded our reach in the media, i.e., monthly press releases and newsletters to keep supporters updated of our progress and campaigns.

All of these efforts have allowed us to expand our education initiatives in rural Guatemala. In 2009 we provided university scholarships to 24 students, provided academic counseling to over 150 secondary students, and provided after-school tutoring to over 200 elementary students. We also opened a small computer lab with 17 used laptops donated by RWI supporters. This makeshift technology center has allowed us to provide computer literacy programs to hundreds of children and adults alike.

In 2010, we will continue to change the lives of impoverished children by providing access to education. As always, we couldn’t have done this much without your generous support.

Read more about our 2009 Annual Report.

On Feburary, 6, 2010, The Rotaract Club of the University of Lethbridge, a Canadian university, raised nearly $6,000 for Roots and Wings International during their 5th Annual Dinner & Silent Auction.

In total, the auction raised $11,446.94, which will be split between RWI and Malawi Girls on the Move, a not-for-profit organization aimed at providing a quality education for the young women of Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa.

The auction’s Dr. Seuss theme, in a homage to the beloved children’s author, played with alliteration and nonsense words in its theme: Scholarships, Schools, and Salamagoox. You can view more photos of the auction here. The Rotoract Club did an amazing job with their auction, and all of the money raised will go a long way toward providing higher education for Guatemala’s indigenous youth. We’re eternally grateful!

You can never go wrong with a chocolate fountain!

The Rotaract Club, a division of Rotary International, is a service club for young men and women aged 18-30. Rotoract Clubs are typically community or university-based and are sponsored by a Rotorary International branch.

When you live in Guatemala, this is a phrase you will hear all the time.  Fijarse literally translated means: to take notice, to pay attention.  This is the literal translation but there is so much more that comes along with the phrase.  The way things happen in Guatemala is different from that of the United States of course.  I had to learn to become accustomed to the fact that things will not always happen when you want them to, nor will they happen when people tell you they will happen.  And that is where fíjese que comes in…

When I first started working in Guatemala I was frustrated when people would start their sentences with “fíjese que…” because I quickly came to learn that meant whatever we were working on was not going to come to fruition when scheduled or happen when I thought it would – at least not on the timeframe that my ‘deadline oriented American self’ thought it should.  At first when I heard the phrase it was like hearing “so here’s the thing…”

As the months went on however, I would find myself using the phrase all of the time to explain to people that while we were trying to finish a task or a project, there could always be something that caused a little delay.  Or I would use it in my story telling or to get a point across.   Ultimately, most things would get done, or if not, we always learned something in the process.

Hence, I learned to stop fretting over “fíjese que” and learned to realize that this was a part of my Guatemalan life, as much as hearing the ayudante on my town’s bus shouting for the next destination, or the water sometimes going out, or not being able to leave a friend’s house without having had a cup of coffee and some sweet bread with them.  Learning the language is not always about the words themselves.  You learn a language truly when you learn the culture.  And ““fíjese que” is definitely more than just a phrase.  It is part of life.

For the majority of the time that I resided in Guatemala, I lived in a rural and indigenous town in the Western Highlands of the country.  From where the office of Roots and Wings International (Raíces y Alas) is located, you would need to travel approximately 80 – 100 kilometers further, following the direction of the Inter-American highway (north and west).  If you travel the way that locals travel (and the way I traveled) you would find yourself in a school bus – exactly the kind that you took to school as a child in the United States. 

There are some differences of course; one being that these buses are not transporting just school children. Once school buses are found to be unfit for the use of transporting American children, they can make their way down to places like Guatemala, to be used to transport the population at large.  There they are refurbished and painted, often in bright and flashy colors, and used as local and national transportation.  Travelers and tourists often call them “chicken buses” but to locals they are simply called “camionetas.”

While these school buses at first would bring memories to me of my childhood, the current reality quickly replaced the memory.  Everyone takes these buses.  It is the way that people travel from place to place; how teachers get to school, how vendors get their produce to markets, how family visit one another.  While occasionally some students will need to ride a camioneta to reach the location of their school, there is not a formalized system of bringing children to school in buses.  More often than not, children walk to school – and the distance they will walk depends on how far their village is to the closest school and whether or not their village or town has a school.

The town I lived in had a school and the villages that made up our municipality had smaller schools.  The indigenous language of my town (and the surrounding areas) is Mam, unlike that of Nahuala where Raíces y Alas is located, where the population speaks K’iche.  There are claimed to be 21 – 24 official languages in Guatemala and in some schools only Spanish is spoken.  There are others that incorporate classes in the indigenous language.  Most young teachers are coming out of high school and not all can speak the indigenous language of their area – making it harder to incorporate the local language.

Guatemala is a very impressive country for a great deal of reasons, one of which being that a large proportion (some say 50%) of the country is Mayan indigenous, which sets in apart from the rest of Central America.  The more equipped schools can be in teaching students, especially in utilizing local language and culture in their teaching methods, the better off all Guatemalans would be.  The educational system is full of flaws in Guatemala and I am excited that there is an organization like Roots and Wings International doing their part to help strengthen Guatemalan’s lives and their culture.

Guatemala wasn’t always a country in ruins, where indigenous Mayans lived in poverty and were denied basic rights such as affordable education. Guatemala was once an egalitarian society where, under the rule of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, farmers were granted equal access to land, those who worked the land were guaranteed a living wage, and social services were readily available to all citizens.

Unfortunately, the years of peace and prosperity that characterized Guzman’s leadership of the people were not to last. When Guzman threatened to nationalize the US-owned United Fruit Company, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), saw this as a sign that the Guatemalan government was shifting toward Communism. In 1954, the CIA, using the very army that it had helped to train, overthrew the Guzman government and plunged the country into the deadliest civil war in Central American history.

The war took its harshest toll on Guatemala’s indigenous population. Over 400 indigenous villages were wiped from existence. So-called “civil defense patrols” committed unspeakable atrocities. In addition to those who were murdered outright, at least 40,000 Guatemalans “disappeared” – a polite way of saying they were abducted, tortured, and left to die in the mountains.

It is a testament to the courage of indigenous Guatemalans that they still comprise 60% of the country’s population. However, while their numbers are strong, their quality of life is anything but. As those of you who are familiar with Roots & Wings International’s work may already know, most indigenous Guatemalans subsist on just $1 a day. Think about that for a second. That’s the same price as a Double Cheeseburger at McDonald’s. A typical indigenous Guatemalan family of, say, four people survives on the same amount of money a “starving” college student might spend on a quick lunch.

Even worse, the country’s “tiny European elite” controls most of the land. It’s a cruel irony. A country once thought communist for dividing land equally among its people is now more democratic because a select few control nearly 70% of the farmable land. Guatemala’s indigenous people are further intrenched in poverty due to their lack of quality education. The state only provides for a child’s education through the sixth grade. After that, a family must pay to send their child to a private institution, a near impossibility for the average indigenous family.

Hopefully, by now, you can see the importance of the work Roots & Wings International is doing in Guatemala. We’re giving indigenous children a chance to dig their way out of the hole that nearly 60 years of civil war has put them in. RWI scholars in our program plan to graduate from college, return to their communities, and help future generations escape a life of poverty. That’s a great thing.