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Children's Charities supported by 121speech Spanish

121speech and Spanish Language Center, Antigua Guatemala, organize an annual Christmas party for orphans and disadvantaged children in Guatemala. Staff and volunteers put in a lot of time and effort to ensure that every child gets a suitable Christmas present, festive food, and lots of games and children's activities.

After the success of the previous year's Christmas party, where 121speech supplied gifts to poor local children from the mountains surrounding Antigua, we decided to host a bigger party in 2009 at a local children's orphanage.

We brought all the teachers from SLC (Spanish learning center) and had a fun-filled day with the kids, (so there were no lessons that day!). There was lots of food and games, and Santa made an appearance to hand out gifts to these under-privileged kids.

Later this year, we will be inviting support for Christmas 2010. If you or anyone you know could possibly help with purchasing or any other kind of assistance to make this a truly memorable moment in these children's lives, please contact us.

And in the eantime, you can also support this by signing up and taking lessons with 121speech and immersing yourself in Latin culture!

Christmas charity celebration

121Speech and SLC joined for Christmas 2008 to give a little happiness to the children of limited resources in the community of Antigua, the capital of Guatemala.

There are a large group of children, ranging from 0 to 14 years. The local school has around four classrooms and there are around 50 to 70 students per classroom with only one teacher in charge. We thought about helping them with learning materials for their education, but the truth is that most have never had the opportunity to receive a nice present from their parents at Christmas time.

We decided to hold a Christmas party on December 24th with a gift for each child. Participating were four teachers from our 121speech and SLC schools with volunteer assistants also. We arrived at 9:00 am in the small town of Aldea el Hato, a 20 minutes drive outside of Antigua. Children started arriving around 9:30 and within a few minutes we had around 300 kids.

The celebration started by splitting the children into groups so each teacher would have the opportunity to play games, sing songs and organize competitions for them. Then the children played a popular game in Latin America, breaking a Pinata. Then we delivered the toys before serving lunch.

We went from worrying that we would have far too many toys, to alarm when we realized just how many children had actually come, but in the end it worked out fine with each child receiving an appropriate toy with only a handful left over.

We delivered baby dolls, construction cars, monster cars, baby rattles, kitchen kits, rag dolls, doctor's kits, race cars, etc. The parents where so thankful for this party bringing a little happiness into the lives of their children.

For us it was a touching experience to see the joyful and excited faces while playing with their new toys.

At our 2007 Christmas party, approximately 160 kids took part; in 2008 there were nearly twice as many. We expect that for this year's party the numbers will increase again, and we will endeavor to help them in other ways.

121speech and SLC are grateful to staff and others who helped with donations, time and assistance.

We welcome your participation this year, not only financially, but also with your time if you have the opportunity to share in this rewarding experience.

Thank you for trusting in us and we hope to be able to continue in the years ahead.

Children's charities we support and urgently need your help

SOS Children's Villages
The worlds largest orphan charity.

Casa Guatemala
Home of orphaned, abandoned and abused children.

Casa de Amore
Ministry founded to reach out to children in need.

Casa Jackson
Recovery center for malnourished infants and children under the age of 11 years.

Onlyachild.org
'Only A Child' maintains a shelter and a carpentry shop for youth in Guatemala City, but the shelter is far more than just a place to sleep.