Shining a Light Within,
Lighting a Way Forward
for Guatemalan Girls
We are on a mission to break the cycle of poverty and adolescent pregnancy in young Guatemalan girls. Help us empower girls to reimagine their future and become the women they aspire to be.
Shining a Light Within,
Lighting a Way Forward
for Guatemalan Girls.
We are on a mission to break the cycle of poverty and adolescent pregnancy in young girls in Guatemala. Empowering girls to reimagine their future and become the women they aspire to be.
Providing choices.
Young girls in Guatemala are not given the choice to write their own stories. The Luminarias Project helps adolescent girls break the cycle of poverty by providing housing, education, youth development, faith formation, and career preparation. The girls develop confidence, master academic and life skills, ultimately gaining a new future outlook with opportunities, hope, and new life choices.
Changing lives.
Guatemalan girls are born into a domineering patriarchal society, with very little opportunity to create their own pathways in life. We are on a mission to significantly invest in the education and personal development of a select number of gifted girls to break the gender-based cultural cycles of oppression. Luminarias girls are provided with an unprecedented level of hands-on special care and attention, specifically designed to empower them to become the future female leaders Guatemala desperately needs.
The Greatest Need
Guatemala’s population is one of the least educated in Latin America. The average length of schooling in Guatemala is four years and only one third of students graduate from sixth grade. The outlook for women and girls is even more alarming:
By age fifteen, 6 out of 10 Indigenous girls have dropped out of school.
Tragically, this contributes to a high number of pregnancies between the ages of 10 and 14.
Guatemala has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Latin America, and it is on the rise.
Half of Guatemalan girls have a child before the age of 19. Many of them are ill-equipped to provide a stable environment within which their children can grow and thrive.
Guatemala ranks 112th out of the 135 countries world-wide in gender equality, making it the country with the least gender equality in Latin America. Gender-based violence is at epidemic levels in Guatemala and the country ranks third in the killings of women (femicide) worldwide.
Violence against women was the number one crime reported to authorities in 2022, including more than 52,000 complaints.
