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Newsroom March’s Charity of the Month: Safe Passage Safe Passage (SP), an educational and social services nonprofit organization, is committed to cleaning up the plague of poverty that thrives in the underserved slums of inner-city Guatemala.
SP was founded by Hanley Danning in 1999 after she witnessed firsthand the unimaginable, but real, images of parents and their children living and working in unsanitary conditions of the sprawling garbage dump. On March 3, 2006, Richard V. Sawyer, CFP, CLU, 28-year MDRT member and Platinum Knight from South Portland, Maine, and MDRT First Vice President Philip E. Harriman, CLU, ChFC, a 24-year MDRT member and Diamond Knight from Falmouth, Maine, presented a $5,000 grant to SP to help fund the purchase of two food delivery vehicles for SP's food donation and distribution program in Guatemala. “I saw hundred of kids who really wanted to go to school, but couldn’t…As an educator, it angered me,” Danning said. “I felt this obligation to go back [to Guatemala] and see what I could do to make a difference for those kids.” According to the CIA World Factsheet, almost 75 percent of the population in Guatemala live below the poverty line. As a result, hundreds of families are forced to retrieve refuse for recycables such as plastic, copper, aluminum and cardboard to earn a couple of dollars per day. Over the years, SP had been instrumental in providing educational and family support services to help break this cycle of poverty. SP’s main building in Guatemala is housed with classrooms, a computer center and a small health care clinic and currently employs 23 Guatamalans as teachers, social workers and office administrators. SP’s food and distribution program feeds approximately 500 children a hot lunch and snack during each school day, provides three meals to 30–40 children in the residential program and supplies 300 underserved families with nutritious monthly rations. |
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