EDELAC   Escuela de la Calle

“The Escuela de la Calle Association,” a.k.a. EDELAC, was founded by Guadalupe Pos and Miguel Quiroa in May 1995 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, with the aim of attending to the city´s street children.

Institutional Philosophy

EDELAC is an institution that serves children.  Our works is guided by Human Rights and the Rights of the Child as established in the UN International Conventions.

 Principles

• We consider the family as the primary unit that provides space for the development of the child.
• We value the capacity of children and adolescents to achieve their own potential.
• We respect the rights and responsibilities of children and adolescents.
• We promote cooperation, solidarity, and mutual aid in order to fight against the poverty in the family.
• We respect the children´s identity, as well as their economic, cultural, ethnic, gender, and social differences.

Institutional Vision

EDELAC is an institution that aims to:
Work with others in order to diminish the number of young people on the street and to reintegrate them into their families and into society.

 Prevent those at risk from being forced onto the street, encouraging their development through stronger family ties.

Institutional Mission

• Address the problem of street life and its effects on the children and adolescents of Quetzaltenango, striving for their reintegration into family and society.
• Support families of at-risk and street youth, providing the children with primary education and the capacity to enter the labor force.
• Provide a space where the children can learn and take advantage of their rights.
• Reestablish and strengthen the family relations of at-risk and street children and adolescents.
• Find substitute homes for the children and adolescents who cannot reestablish relations with their families.
• Coordinate with GO´s and NGO´s for integrated support of children in the city of Quetzaltenango.

General Objective

Provide integrated support to the working and street youth of Quetzaltenango in order to contribute to the formation of a developed, just, and humane society.

Beneficiary Population

• Working children
• Children at risk of being forced onto the street
• Children living in extreme poverty
• Street children

About our programs

• Center for Integrated Education

The preventive aspect of EDELAC is a school for children at high risk of being forced onto the street.  Since 1997, it has served children between the ages of 5 and 14 coming from troubled family backgrounds, including: intra-family abuse, alcoholism, severe poverty, step-parents, etc.  The School functions as a prevention program, providing formal education, healthcare, food, and protection of the children´s rights.  At this moment, the school is serving 190 children.

Hogar Abierto (Open Home)

In 1999, EDELAC established this house as a way of addressing the problem of street children, working youth, and children living in extreme poverty.  Every day, the children receive educational, psychological, and recreational attention.  They rely on the house as an immediate crisis center where they can find nutritious food, and a safe place to sleep, thus avoiding permanent life on the street.  At the same time, it is a temporary home that serves as a stepping stone for children returning to their families or looking for positive prospects in their own life.  The only requirement for admission is the good will to change one´s life.

Quetzaltrekkers

The Quetzaltrekkers organization, located in Quetzaltenango, was founded in 1996 as an Eco-tourism project, offering hiking trips around the region to backpackers and travelers.  They lead trips to the Tajumulco, Santiaguito, and Santa Maria volcanoes, as well as to Lake Atitlan, and the Mam region of Nebaj to Todos Santos in the Cuchumatanes Mountains.
The double objective of Quetzaltrekkers is to offer the exceptional opportunity to learn the geography and Mayan culture of Guatemala, and at the same time to function as a source of sustainable funding for EDELAC.  At the present time, this is the most important source of income for the development of the project.
On the other hand, it relies on the support of volunteers from around the world that come to Quetzaltenango and become interested in the city´s social projects.

 How you can help

• Volunteer in any of our 3 programs.
• Extend economic support to a child in the form of a scholarship, or contribute to pay a teacher´s salary.
• Send us educational supplies and/or clothes and shoes for children between 6 and 14 years of age.
• Support the execution of various micro-projects at Escuela de la Calle.
• Send us medical supplies, vitamins, anti-parasitics, antibiotics, etc.

Other things we are doing 2007

           
We started offering chess classes
                                               
                 
We have physical activities               Teaching agriculture
                                                            (Hogar)
                                                                       

                 
Teaching art                                       Nutritional support

                                                           
                 
We have a school for parents          Making detergent (hogar)