June 2008

Ten Taft students and two faculty members spent the first 10 days of their summer break on a service trip working with Nuestros Ahijados (God's Child Project) in Antigua, Guatemala.

In addition to completing two houses, they helped set up for an international conference on child trafficking (where they met the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala), worked at a homeless shelter serving food and distributing clothes and volunteered at a malnutrition center for children. Students lived with host families and took a cultural weekend trip to Lake Atitlan and the indigenous market at Chichicastenago.

"The Guatemala trip is a profound opportunity for students to experience another culture and witness the difference they can make by improving the lives of others," says trip coordinator David Dethlefs, who has work with God's Child Project on previous occasions. "Although this was Taft's first service trip to Guatemala, there is already talk among the students about returning next year."

This year's participants were rising seniors Ben Brauer, Steven Crozier, Kevon Davis, Brian Kao, Jimmy Kukral, and Maddy Martin, and Elizabeth Brauer, Ellen Eckhout, Melanie Ng, and Cara Welch-Rubin from the Class of '10. Faculty members were David Dethlefs and Elizabeth Frew.

View more photographs from the trip