Youth Education Partnership

Youth Education Partnership (YEP) is dedicated to helping children and youth overseas who have been forced out of school due to economic necessity.  Our goal is to provide essential monetary and social assistance for the young people to restart and complete their primary and secondary educations.  In doing so we intend to build lasting friendships that will uplift and encourage the long-term success of our beneficiaries.​

YEP began in January 2014 when two of our current volunteers became acquainted with three Quiche Mayan brothers, who were struggling to survive as shoeshine boys while living in the streets of Antigua, Guatemala.   Much of the economy in Guatemala is based on low-wage, unregulated street labor and sales.  To get a real job, with a steady income and social security benefits, like a police officer or department store clerk, one must have a high school diploma.  The diploma is the critical factor in rising out of poverty.

Our volunteers worked with local friends in Antigua to arrange for the boys’ housing and daily needs so that they could go back to school.  Later, this small group of friends joined together to form YEP, with the goal of providing disadvantaged children with their daily needs so as to enable them to stay in school and break the cycle of poverty.

In November 2016 our efforts bore fruit when our first two beneficiaries received their high school diplomas, and they are now working in Antigua.  We are currently sponsoring several other boys and girls so that they can continue their primary and secondary education.  In the past three years, we have also provided school uniforms, supplies, and registration fees for children in the village of Chuicaca, Totonicapan.