This typical house, with its thatch roof and mud floors, provides scant protection when 30 inches of rain fall each month during the rainy season. | Government corruption, civil war, and natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes have kept the people poor. According to the CIA World Factbook, 75% of Guatemalans live below the poverty level. |
 
We worked with the family that lives in this house. | The family was always at risk of being homeless because the house actually belongs to a friend who permits them to live in it out of kindness. |
 | The infrastructure is miserably inadequate. Centrally-supplied water is not adequately purified. Most houses have electricity, but dangerously inadequate wiring. Far too many toilets do not yet connect with the central sewage treatment facility. |  |
 | Most people cook inside, many over wood fires. Although people do not know the word "asthma", many are afflicted with lung problems from a life of living in smoke-filled houses. |  |
 | A woman washing clothes on the porch of her home. |
