A time for giving

Local adventurer leads fundraising effort for children’s education in Guatemala

After graduating from NDSU in 2008, Luke Armstrong decided to turn a semester’s stay in Chile into a hitchhiking journey that would take him north all the way to Alaska. However, that plan was put on the back burner when Armstrong ended up serving as the social services director of Nuestros Ahijados, a nonprofit health and education program in Guatemala. That particular adventure lasted four years.

Since 2012, Armstrong has split his time traveling the world, directing and volunteering at social services programs in Central America, and writing about his experiences through his blog, TravelWriteSing, and in a travelogue, “The Nomad’s Nomad,” published last year.

Now, Armstrong is spearheading the fundraising for a new education center for impoverished children in Guatemala. The center is supported by Integral Heart Foundation, whose purpose is to change “culture from the inside out through person-to-person sponsoring and educational programs that include the development of mind, body, spirit and emotions.”

Working toward a $20,000 goal, Armstrong is already about one-fifth of the way there. But to provide the students with the resources and staff required for a meaningful education, more funding is necessary. And for the students to start by the next term in January, that funding would need to happen quickly.

So now Armstrong is reaching out and trusting in the benevolence of friends and strangers to help realize this goal. High Plains Reader caught up with Armstrong and discussed the progress of the Integral Heart education center.

High Plains Reader: Could you briefly describe the purpose of this project?

Luke Armstrong: The fundraiser is an online campaign aimed at raising $20,000 to open an education center for orphaned, abandoned and impoverished Guatemalan children. The Integral Heart Foundation has supported the education and lives of 60 children since 2010, and it is time to have a base of operations for the services they provide children and families. I am reaching out to everyone in my network, making noise about this with the belief that enthusiastic passion for the right cause will be enough to get us there.

HPR: What are some of the services that the funding will provide for these children, and how many children will hopefully benefit?

Armstrong: This will provide 60 children (ages 3 to 20) with a good education, a network of social support and something crucial to their success – responsible adults they can look up to who will look after them. They will have someone to show their grades to who will be proud of them. Kids need loving encouragement to motivate them to believe in their dreams and to reach for them.

HPR: Where in Guatemala will the education center be?

Armstrong: It will be in Antigua, where Integral Heart Foundation is headquartered. Children are from the surrounding impoverished areas.

HPR: When would the center’s school term begin? Is there a deadline after which the fundraiser will be over?

Armstrong: The Guatemalan school calendar correlates to the coffee crop. I won’t give up on this fundraiser until we get there, but there is a very tangible date of mid-January when the school year begins again in Guatemala. My hope is enough people will hear about this cause and support it in time for us to get the center up and running by then.

HPR: Could you describe the proposed environment of the education center? How would this differ from the opportunities/resources already available?

Armstrong: Kids in the program receive not the usual educational package. In addition to general subjects, they learn critical thinking, meditation and philosophy. I’ve met kids in the program who five years ago were living in garbage dumps eating refuse, and today they are reading Russian classics. It’s an amazing program! They will be provided with nutritional resources, have health education and learn about important subjects like domestic violence, women’s rights and a gamut of other things that do not get taught to any kids in Guatemala, much less kids from economically challenged backgrounds.

HPR: Of course we all know the benefits of a good education in the lives of children and young adults, but could you briefly give your perspective on the importance of this particular project?

Armstrong: From what I’ve seen in my eight years working in development, this program is giving kids who are on a path to a severely difficult future a way out. I won’t be vague – so many kids in these situations end up as human trafficking victims, prostitutes, gang members, drug addicts, thieves or dying from curable ailments. They are part of a vicious sociological cycle. But with programs like this, with this education center, these kids have a way out. In the grand scheme of things, $20,000 is nothing – it’s less than the price of one person’s college education. That’s all it will cost to open and run an education center that will be saving 60 kids from the very difficult realities they were born into.

HPR: Could you share any particular anecdotes about students who have benefited from the Integral Heart Foundation’s services?

Armstrong: I met Maria and Carmen in a garbage dump in 2009. In efforts to get them into an education program I was running at the time, we had to work with their mother, who was renting them to a man named Pedro to collect aluminum cans from the dump. They ate from the dump. They clothed themselves there. At first their mother told us, “I was born poor, I will die poor. My daughters were born poor, they will die poor.” This mentality may surprise some people, but when you are eating from a garbage dump in debilitating poverty, it’s hard not to be a bit fatalistic. Because of the work of Nuestros Ahijados and then Integral Heart Foundation, which eventually got them out of the garbage dump, Maria and Carmen have now both finished the fifth grade. They can read and write. They no longer look at the world with downcast eyes, but with the confident gazes of young women who have been given permission to dream and given the resources they need to turn those dreams into a reality.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

For more information about the project, check out Luke Armstrong’s website,TravelWriteSing.com

To donate, go tohttps://www.globalgiving.org/projects/providing-an-education-center-for-60-children/

If interested in helping out in other ways, email Luke at Luke.M.Armstrong@gmail.com