The Story Behind the Frown

The staff does and has been doing great work in the communities here. They are out in the villages every day, teaching, encouraging, motivating, and building trusted relationships with the people. Fighting poverty is a proccess. It requires time to change ideas, not quick monetary fixes.

With that being said, I'm so glad that we can be part of the FH Guatemala team. I have not been able to do as much engineering type work as I would have wanted this first year in Guatemala, but that's ok. I'm glad I have been able to lend a hand in other things that need to get done and I'm glad that I have been able spend time in the communities building the relationships and trust that is so vital to what we do.

For example, one job I have had is taking pictures of kids for the child sponsorship program. Sounds fun, it sure is. Sounds easy, it sure ain't. When taking pictures the typical cultural thing to do is get rid of your smile, just like Americans did 50 years ago. Not exactly what we want when we send updates to sponsors or are trying to get new sponsors. The kids here are adorable, especially with their big smiles that they almost always have, so my difficult task was to capture it. I think I've said "smile, look at the camera" a million times in Q'eqchi, in a million different ways to get kids to smile for me. In fact, when I'm in the communities now I commomly hear a kid repeating those words I'm now so known for "Se'en, i li camera". Overall, I think I've done a decent job, but there are some kids, if you saw their picture, you would think they were pretty depressed.


So next time you recieve a child update and they seem to be angry, imagine, just two seconds earlier they probably had the biggest, cutest smile of all. And if you ever are thinking about sponsoring a child and are flipping through photos, don't skip over the kid with a frown because it was only the lack of skill on the part of the photographer to draw out that wonderful smile.