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Guatemala is home to some of the poorest communities in the Western hemisphere. Guatemalan children suffer the highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the entire world. A woman in Guatemala is ten times more likely to die during childbirth than in the United States.

This is not a new problem. The arrival of the Spanish 500 years ago marked the start of a difficult history for the Maya. Their lands and their freedom were taken. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of lost their lives in a civil war.

Yet they have endured. 

Today, there are millions of Maya people living in Guatemala. More than half of all Guatemalans speak a Mayan language.

But the health care system in Guatemala does not serve them. Many would prefer to die at home than to be treated in a hospital where no one speaks their language or respects their dignity.

We work in Guatemala because the Maya people and Mayan culture are still alive.

We want to keep it that way.