Help us keep helping! Quetzaltrekkers is building EDELAC a library for the new secondary school and although we're no longer with them, we want to do what we can from afar.

For those of you that don't know us: We are Bryan and Yara, two strange strangers from the US and the Netherlands who met while working together as coordinators at Quetzaltrekkers in Xela, Guatemala. Quetzaltrekkers is part of the nonprofit EDELAC (Escuela de la Calle), which provides needed educational opportunities for vulnerable indigenous children of the region with a safe home and primary school. We worked to help Quetzaltrekkers run its treks all around the volcanoes of the Western Highlands to raise money for these projects. The organization is amazing, but it was probably the kids themselves that kept us both there for so long, doing our small part to try to help.

We worked there for almost 3 years, but finally had to say goodbye and have been traveling together since we left in August of this year. In our "retirement", we've gotten out of the dark QT office and back into the world again. We've hiked more volcanoes, rafted down rivers, celebrated day of the dead, sweated in the heat of the Mexican coast, and shivered in the cold of the Arizona mountains.

It's been a radical change in our lives, but we still think about Quetzaltrekkers every day and can't let go of this cause. We still want to help the amazing kids we met during our time, cause this organization really means so much to us. That's why we are so excited that Quetzaltrekkers and EDELAC are pushing ahead and right now have created an incredible opportunity to support from afar, which we wanted to personally support somehow. Our budget is small, so we're asking for your help to help them in this special project, because it's really the perfect time to give.

Why? EDELAC is finally realizing a development that was just a dream during our time as coordinators: Building a secondary school! This is an incredibly important step to provide ongoing opportunities for the students who finish the primary school program and have no chance to continue with studies. Now EDELAC will be able to help them all the way up to university, which has been a dream for the founder Guadalupe since the beginning. Quetzaltrekkers is pledging to build the library portion of the new school, with an ambitious goal of $45,000 USD to fully build and equip the library.

Unbelievably, they have secured a donation match for this campaign, meaning that every single dollar given will be DOUBLED instantly by a match from the Rockefeller family. Plus, with the Many Hopes partnership, any donations are tax-deductible (at least in the US). So we thought this is the perfect time to ask you all, our friends and family, to help us support this project.

We have set a personal goal to donate the equivalent of our shared travel budget for the rest of the year. Our travels since leaving aren't benefitting Quetzaltrekkers directly, and we thought this would be a way to benefit them indirectly and help fund this part of the new school.

So with our budget of $40 USD per person per day, we calculated:

$40 dollars per day

x 25 days left in the year

x 2 retired Quetzaltrekkers trying to find meaning in life again

= $2,000 USD by the end of the year!

Remember, any amount given will be immediately doubled, which is super impactful for the fundraising effort. It’s really the best time to give to this cause that we both care so much about, so please consider if you can. If we can do this with your help, it will help provide hundreds of kids with incredible educational opportunities that are far too hard to find in Guatemala.

To read more details about the project, learn where the money goes, and why it makes such a difference, you can see it all directly on the Quetzaltrekkers Library Donation Page.

Thank you so much for your care and support! Saludos,

Bryan & Yara.