For rural families whose livelihood depends on the land, deforestation is a serious issue. The availability of technology such as chainsaws and cars for cargo transportation has reached this isolated area, but an understanding of its impact has not. The harvest and sale of lumber and firewood, compounded by a growing population, is ravaging the mountainsides. What has been naturally renewable for generations has now transformed into a limited and quickly vanishing resource.

Beyond the loss of this essential resource, deforestation leads to increased run-off of topsoil for crops and land destabilization. In a recent Guatemalan national newspaper article, it was reported that with the current balance of rates of deforestation and reforestation, the forested mass of the country will be depleted within 65 years.

We address this issue during community and school educational discussions and support the activity of a local women's organization with a focus on reforestation. We hope to further facilitate a reforestation initiative through the formation of village specific committees and several tree-planting workshops with both school age children and adults.

In working together with the teachers to establish healthier school environments, we have developed an understanding of the educational system and methods in the area. Students are taught to read and write in Q'anjob'al and Spanish, but are limited by a lack of books. Each grade has a workbook of studies, but apart from these the children are left to practice independently. For this reason, many children do not study outside of school, and the highly motivated read only discarded newspapers due to the prohibitively high price of books.

One of the teachers suggested to us the idea of a school library. He expressed how a small library of resource materials and storybooks could help the students with their reading skills and depth of knowledge in the different curriculum areas. We understand how the opportunity to peruse a storybook as a beginning reader or research different subjects as a more advanced reader can enhance the educational experience and increase enthusiasm and motivation of the students; it is in this idea that we have agreed to support a small library project.

Through a Guatemalan NGO called Child Aid, we will be able to purchase quality textbooks and storybooks, the various subjects of which the teachers will select. Child Aid provides 250 books at a cost of about $50; we plan to purchase 1000 books to begin the library at a cost of $200.

For nearly fifteen years, the three villages have benefitted from two water supply systems that provide water directly to the majority of families' homes. In the past few years, the spring supplying the system for two of the villages has begun to dry, and during dry seasons, there has been a grave scarcity of water. Several days could pass without water in the communities.

Begun as a community-driven initiative and collaboration, a water project was planned to increase the supply of water to the system by linking a catchment at another spring. We received full funding for the project through donations at Water Charity's Appropriate Projects program; the project was completed in July 2010.

The second water supply system, which provides for the third village also suffers from a lack of water. An improvement project is currently being organized that will increase water supply to the system by the installation of an additional supply line from the collection tank at the existing spring. Funding will again be provided by donations through Water Charity's Appropriate Projects; the project is expected to be completed by May 2011.

The maternal mortality figures in the municipality of Santa Eulalia are some of the worst in all of Guatemala due to poor sanitary conditions, malnutrition, lack of education, and extreme poverty. Ninety-nine percent of births occur in the home and are overseen by midwives. These are usually respected older women of the community and are an essential asset to the local healthcare system.

In many cases, the interaction with a midwife is the only healthcare a woman ever receives. Appropriate materials and consistent training, combined with a forum for the midwives to share their experiences and knowledge, could help reduce the amount of maternal deaths.

The idea of a two-phase initiative of educational trainings followed by a distribution of supply kits originated from the collaboration of the previous Peace Corps volunteers in Santa Eulalia with the doctor in the health center. There are 130 midwives in the area, and we hope to compile kits through donations from medical supply companies, medical schools, and monetary donations.

Each kit would include a fetoscope, a straight kelley forceps, blunt nose scissors, a metal kidney basin, an infant suction bulb, a metric measuring tape, a reusable surgeon's mask and head cover, a fluid-proof apron, a fluid-proof drop sheet, reusable shoe covers, and a rain poncho.

The Healthy Homes program focuses on improving the overall health of families, and people cannot be healthy without enough food to eat. Therefore, the subject of nutrition through the lifespan has been a recurrent theme throughout our health talks with groups of women, at the school, and the community as a whole.

Santa Eulalia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the entire country of Guatemala. This is in direct relationship to the degree of poverty and agricultural difficulties, which include steep mountainsides, rocky soil, occasional crop loss (as occurred this past year due to hurricane Agatha), nutrient-depletion of the soil, lack of crop diversity, and a misuse of chemical fertilizers. We address these challenges in our health talks, discussing possible solutions in sustainable agriculture techniques, such as organic composting and vermicomposting, contour ditches, crop rotation, companion planting, and family and tire gardens.

Together with the teachers, we implement and maintain school garden projects. Through these activities, we discuss the water cycle, plant biology, environmental education, organic composting, trash management, and nutrition.

The gardens serve not only as a hands-on and interactive teaching tool for the students, but also as a model for the community. This was how we originally breached the topic of nutrition and food security in the villages and since then the community members' interest to learn more has provided the momentum for the furthering of this project.

Many Peace Corps volunteers in the past three decades have done world map projects with local schools in their host country. The construction of wall-sized maps of the world with inset maps of Guatemala would serve as a geographic lesson, art project, and permanent resource at the school.

The maps would be painted on the outside walls of the schools, as a common resource for all community members. Most residents of the villages have never left the town, and most students cannot identify Guatemala on a world map. The map would help with the conceptual understanding of the world for both community members and students. Our goal is to guide the students in the process of outlining, then painting, these maps in each of the three schools with a total cost of about $200 for supplies.