The Effects on the Lives of Guatemalan Children for Being Abandoned

THE EFFECTS ON THE LIVES OF GUATEMALAN CHILDREN FOR BEING ABANDONED

“I have a house and I am going to the school….. But, I am still depressed. My life is not good”.
Eli - Abandoned Children

In my country, Guatemala, children are many times abandoned by their parents in the streets, churches, public places or even in a trash can. When someone finds children in such places, quickly, they carry them to the hospital. Fortunately, these kids live and can continue with their lives. However, they grow up in organizations that care about them and provide them with food and cloth, but this is not enough for them. They need the figure of their parents and someone who can tell them how to do the rights, avoid the wrongs and pass the mistakes. On the other hand, there are children that live with one parent (mother/father) may be this situation does not look so bad, but at the end it has in many ways the same effect. May be these kinds of children can have a more comfortable life, but they also need the figure of that parent who decided to leave them and not care about them. Therefore, both parts have different effects in their lives depending on the actions they want to do and how they imagine their future. Nevertheless, the bad effects are always: not to have a good level of education, not grow up with ethic and taking bad decisions that can change the course of their lives.

The organizations that care about abandoned children provide them with the basic needs. These things are not enough for making a kid to become in a good person in the future. Also, most of the times the education is not what they need or it does not included other types of education such as, musical, artistic, social, technological and religious. In 2007, in my city, Quetzaltenango, I and a friend went to an organization called “Aldeas Infantiles S.O.S.” to do a social service for three months. This organization cares about children/young that have been abandoned by their parents. The center is...