Smelling Las Rosas in Xela, Guatemala

Years ago…

After I traveled to Chiapas, Mexico as you can read about here…

I decided to travel to a Guatemalan city by myself for about 2 months…

To a city called Xela…

Back in those days, I never traveled too much….

Chiapas, Mexico was the only place I had been to outside the US….

But as you can read here and here…

I enjoyed my trip to Guatemala with all the hiking opportunities in this country…

But I didn’t travel there to travel and hike…

The main purpose of my trip was to improve my Spanish and also to work for a local NGO at the time….

Now  I studied Spanish at this local school that you can see here below…

Though I forgot the exact name of the school, it was basically “Mundo” something….

But the school did help me improve my Spanish a little bit at the time…

About 7 or 8 years ago…

As the school focused more on practice…

After covering the essential grammer in the Spanish language….

We would then practice Spanish with a bunch of locals that the school had…..

As funny as it might have been as some had accents more difficult to understand than others…

Either way, that was one purpose of the trip…

And another purpose was to work on some NGO work…

Now, in those days, I thought maybe working for NGOS was the way to live abroad and do something meaningful…

But with some experience in different countries…

From Guatemala to Nicaragua to Bolivia….

I have grown more skeptical of all of that…

But that’s another opinion for another day…

Either way…

I got some early experience working for NGOs by first working for an NGO in Xela, Guatemala at the.

From my memory, it was basically an NGO that was meant to serve children in a poorer neighborhood of a Guatemalan city called Xela (or Quetzaltenango formally)…

And the NGO was formed by another man some years before and it was run by some Dutch chick and some local Guatemalan guy…

Anyway, this NGO works in a neighborhood called Las Rosas in Xela, Guatemala…

Las Rosas meaning The Rosas in English…

Either way, I got brought up to help this NGO work in helping the local community in the area…

And below was my experience from my memory from almost a decade ago…

Working in Las Rosas

In my initial days working with this NGO…

I mostly ended up working with another American chick at the time with running fun events for the local children that this NGO served.

From memory, this NGO mostly served to watch over local children in the area while providing entertainment and some educational events.

At this time, I was still exploring if I wanted to go through the NGO route of working abroad and having a contribution to local communities in that way.

Anyway, over a week or two…

I ended up having a meeting with the Dutch chick who basically ran this NGO at the time with another American volunteer as well…

At some local café near the historic center…

We sat down and had a cup of coffee each…

And the real contribution we were meant to have was being discussed…

The Dutch chick wanted us to run a fundraising campaign to basically help bring in funds for her NGO.

In hindsight, I believe she didn’t have much experience with fundraising as she was expecting two novices (myself and another American chick) to bring in something north of 30,000.

Though that wasn’t what either of us promised to bring in when we began volunteering for this NGO.

I remember having a talk with the other American chick and thinking “big goals, she has, eh?”

Well, 30,000 was the goal anyway.

But goals don’t always align with reality…

Anyway, we did the usual of online fundraising…

Something I had minor experience with..

And given I only had more or less a month to run a campaign…

We ended up fundraising for this NGO roughly around 1,000 bucks.

With the help of the other American chick who did her part also in trying to get people to donate also.

With about a month of work from 2 novices in online fundraising….

A 1,000 bucks is alright.

Granted, with more experience now down my belt, I would have done things better to fundraise money for this NGO.

Because, in my experience living in Xela, I did feel a need to help the community that this NGO served.

But we did what we could with the limited time we had.

Reflection

On my final day leaving Xela, Guatemala…

I was sitting down on another day in which some of the local kids in the building were going to go through the usual activities…

Eat some food, some fun activities to keep them busy…

And then to my surprise…

A group “good bye” hug to my surprise as I got a goodbye hug…

And also a gift from the local folks with some of the kids writing “goodbye” on a artisan gift.

It was cool overall.

And, as you can see, is a gift I still have almost a decade later.

It was an interesting experience from what I remember.

Following up my time in Chiapas, Mexico…

Right across the border from Guatemala….

It was an experience that I could not forget.

As it was my first time ever living abroad for a few months without anyone I know traveling with me.

It also exposed me to some of the realities of working in NGOs in Latin America.

In this case, to the realities of trying to raise funds to help a good cause…

In hindsight, this NGO is a good organization from what I know that is doing what it can to help a specific area of Guatemala through a cause that they have experience with.

And, over the years of living down here, it is these organizations that are not often appreciated for the work they do in specific areas of Latin America.

Despite the impact they have locally…

Either way, it was an interesting experience I had down here…

And one that gave me more insight into life outside the typical touristy areas…

And if you have any experience in Guatemala or Latin America…

Let me know below in the comment section or follow me on Twitter here.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Matt