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HISTORICAL REVIEW

Two Guatemalan psychologists and a doctor began in1993 totrying to rehabilitate
children and young people who sniffed glue around the largest garbage dump in
Guatemala City called the “Relleno Sanitario”.

After a year of working with our own resources, it was evaluated that the efforts made
with the young addicts did not achieve their rehabilitation and the young addicts
themselves asked us to work with their little brothers, so that they would not fall into the
same addiction. Then he began to work on recreational proposals and literacy with
child workers in the Sanitary Landfill who did not attend school, many did not have their
personal identification document, others had been expelled from school for their
behavior shaped by their experience «on the street «.

CAFNIMA is legally formalized (Care Center for the Family and Abused Children) in
1995 and began as a center for formal education with children and young people from
the Sanitary Landfill to avoid their initiation into addiction or their incorporation into
criminal gangs. Today we have a formal school in operation for more than 360 children
and young people from the territory.

Since then, a great variety of programs have been carried out: A legal assistance
program for children from El Relleno to obtain their identification documents, support
for marginal settlements to regulate their land tenure, and the improvement of
precarious housing. In the year 2000 we started a microfinance program that included
women from various marginal areas of Guatemala City. This program is being
transformed today into a School of Entrepreneurship.

Since 2009 we started working in a remote Valley of Alta Verapaz, with twelve Q’eqchi’
communities with a proposal agreed with the local development communities based on
five axes: health, education, solidarity economy, strengthening of local organization and
rights humans. To this day, we continue our work in the area with support work for
single women, agroecological agriculture, and the training of midwives and health
promoters, among other actions.

This work would not have been carried out without the solidarity support of sister
foundations from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and other solidarity countries
to which we owe our gratitude and our integral work.