This is the year-end letter we just sent out with tax receipts from PEG Partners, the non-profit I direct. My wife Deanna and I founded PEG in 2004, and it has been beautiful to see the impact it has had. This is the news from this past year. Thought I’d share it with the rest of you too…
Dear PEG Partner,
It has been a good year for PEG. I’m constantly amazed at the extraordinary generosity I encounter, and the effect that so little investment can have in a place like Guatemala. The combination of those two facts is nothing short of wondrous. Here are some highlights in ongoing projects from the last year (with amounts for you numbers folks)…
• For another year, PEG has partnered with Child-Aid on its Reading for Life program, which has supported literacy and critical thought programs in the two rural villages of Xojolá and Pasaq, training local teachers, developing fledgeling libraries and providing books to local schools, as well as distributing 1500 Spanish language children’s books. Many students also participated in the Adventures in Reading program over the two-month school break. ($8000)
• I visited the village of Pachaj, near Quetzaltenango, in the fall, and took funding with me to build a needed classroom onto the overcrowded public school there. Students were recently having classes on the porches, but thankfully they will soon have more inside space. ($2500)
• In partnership with LEAF International, PEG continues to support the music program in El Tejar, near Chimaltenango. We are extremely excited about plans to bring the kids from El Tejar to perform at the LEAF Festival in Black Mountain, NC this October. ($700 for instruments, $1500 for salaries)
• To start off 2012, we funded a traveling book box program being implemented by La Biblioteca Puerta Abierta for 2012 ($550), and bought new tables and chairs for the Escuela David LaMotte in Tzanchaj, and poured a floor in a new classroom ($760).
• We were thrilled to receive our first 5-digit check this year, a $10,000 donation to the general project fund. I am almost more moved, though, by the $601.43 raised at a concert/keynote of mine last weekend (January 28). Most of the people there were teenagers, and I think the largest donation was $25. Small efforts really do add up. Those donations entirely covered one of the following two projects…
• Donors were creative in their engagement with PEG this year. We received our first stock donation (so now we know how to do that!), and also had a donor set up the first ongoing monthly donation through Network for Good.com, covering a teacher’s salary at the Escuela David LaMotte for the whole year ($1600).As always, PEG remains all volunteer. The only salaries we pay are for a few teachers and librarians in Guatemala. Our administration costs (occasional plane tickets, printing, postage and not too much else), are covered only by those donors who choose to support that. Otherwise, every penny of your donation goes to our projects in Guatemala.
Thank you for your interest, and for making a difference — you really do.
David LaMotte
Director , PEG Partners Inc.
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