Rescued from the garbage dumps: Maribel’s story
For several hours every day, Maribel sifts through garbage at the city dump to help earn money for her family.
Thanks to the OBI-supported Operation Rescate, Maribel gets the chance to go to school every day and have a hot breakfast.
GUATEMALA CITY – Maribel’s bright green eyes are a startling contrast to her dirt-stained hands and clothes—a constant reminder of the life she lives in Guatemala’s city garbage dump.
Maribel is just 4 years old, but already she understands about hard work, poverty and going hungry.
For several hours each day, she sifts through garbage at the city dump with her parents, looking for items that can be salvaged and recycled and, most importantly, earn her family enough money to survive another day.
But life offers them little guarantees. After working alongside about 150 or so other trash pickers, Maribel makes her way across the piles of trash to a shanty made of scrap metal and plastic bags that is home to her, her parents and her 4 siblings.
If she’s lucky, there may be dinner for them all.
“I’m not able to eat every day,” she says, “And sometimes it’s just once a day.”
But thanks to an OBI-supported ministry, Maribel is getting the help—and hope—she so desperately needs.
Every Thursday evening, Operation Rescate (Operation Rescue) and volunteers from Operation Blessing, arrive to the dump to provide families like Maribel’s with a hot meal such as soup, bread and coffee.
When Operation Rescate’s director Giuseepe saw the overwhelming needs of the children, however, he decided he needed to do something more than just hunger relief. So he opened a school.
Every morning, Maribel, along with more than 100 children who live at the city garbage dumps and impoverished areas of the city, are picked up by a bus and arrive to Guiseepe’s school where they not only get an education, but also a free breakfast thanks to support from Operation Blessing.
For Maribel, it’s a guaranteed blessing and one of the few things she looks forward to every day.
“You can see the excitement on Maribel’s face on being able to go to school,” said an OB staff member. “Not only for the chance to study and play with her friends, but also for the security of knowing she will have something to eat.”
HOW YOU CAN HELP: Operation Blessing is helping to transform the futures of children like these by providing clean water, education assistance, nutritional feeding programs, medical care and more.
Please make an online contribution toward OBI's orphan care programs today and help us continue to reach those in need.