The international confederation Oxfam recently put out an interactive map illustrating the severity of the global food crisis. Navigate to Guatemala, click on the red exclamation point and you will see some alarming statistics.
LAKE ATITLAN DIRECTORY
Catherine Todd of Panajachel has created a wonderful resource for the Lake Atitlan community: The Lake Atitlan Directory. From the website:
"This is a free service dedicated to sharing contacts, information, resources & wish lists.
WELCOME! Add Community Services, NGO's, ONG's and nonprofits, medical teams, businesses, services, individuals and more. Add your company, group, organization or self now! Personal and Business welcome. It's fast and free.
The Free online LakeAtitlanDirectory.com is open to everyone, if you have something that would be of interest or benefit to the Lake Atitlan area, Guatemala or Central America.
We will be adding a calendar to help co-ordinate the many missionary, medical, dental, educational, anthropological, architectural, environmental or other groups and teams that are visiting the lake. For now, this information can be put in the "Notes" or "Date" section. Also see the volunteer and paid position fields.
It is our hope that the online database of the Lake Atitlan Directory of Community Services can become a shared clearing house of resources, information and volunteers. If you would like to VOLUNTEER to help with this online database, or have a large number of listings we can use, let me know so we can help get them entered. It's easy to upload in spreadsheet, tab or cvs format."
Check it out!: http://lakeatitlandirectory.com/
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GUATEMALA ELECTED TO U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL
In October Guatemala was elected as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council for a term of 2 years beginning January 1, 2012. The U.N. seats 5 non-permanent members that are elected by the U.N. General Assembly with 2 from Africa, and 1 each from the Asian Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Latin America/Caribbean. Read the full press release here:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/ga11160.doc.htm