about la limonada

There is an estimate of 60,000 – 100,000 people living in La Limonada.  It is an urban slum community built into a ravine that runs through Guatemala City.  It was established in the late 1950′s by people who fled other areas of the country for various reasons.  People settled there and built homes in the ravine because they had nowhere else to live.  Many of the families live with no running water or electricity.  The geographic location of the community and the sub-culture of extreme poverty have produced a lack of education and job opportunities, spiritual darkness and unsustainable living conditions.

The people live in these conditions because they are caught in a cycle of poverty that is all they know.  In most cases they have no hope of a better future for themselves or their families.  Children sniff glue, suffer sexual abuse, in many cases by their own family members.  Girls become pregnant at a very young age.  Boys resort to stealing and are often killed in gang warfare.  The government has made little or no effort to improve their conditions and the police rarely, if ever, enter the neighborhood.  As the saying goes among the people of Guatemala City, “Even Santa Claus doesn’t go to La Limonada.”

Since 2001 Tita Evertsz and her team have provided hope for the children of La Limonada through the “Vidas Plenas” (translated: “Full Lives”) program at two schools in the community. These schools are not recognized by the Guatemalan government, but are places where children from 4-15 years old are loved, valued, fed, clothed, tutored, taught proper hygiene, and provided with scholarships to attend formal school, kept off the streets… away from the gangs and off drugs.

–Information taken from the Lemonade International website.  For more information check out www.lemonadeinternational.org