While providing a needed social service, the project helps an urban community struggling with unemployment, poverty, and gang violence. A small production and distribution team is employed in the project, which increases their job skills and improves family incomes.

The soy milk is made by the women’s association Unidas Para Vivir Mejor (UPAVIM), another organization that Plenty helped to establish soy food processing capabilities. 

Additional funding provided by the Trull Foundation, SG Foundation and project donors in 2011 has kept the food supplementation going, and will enable a related small business to produce and sell baked goods and soy milk in the local community in the near future. The goal is to offset some of the food supplementation costs with income from sales.

Proyecto Nutricional de Soya Karen is named in honor of Plenty’s former Board Chairperson Karen Heikkala, who passed away in 2009.

She and her husband Thomas had visited the dump area, and it was Karen’s wish for Plenty to help the families there in a meaningful way. 

The project has been given life thanks to the work of Karen’s husband Thomas Heikkala and Plenty soy specialist Chuck Haren who secured the initial funding and have been involved every step of the way.

Thanks and appreciation goes to dozens of individual donors, the Trull Foundation in Texas, the SG Foundation in California, the committed members of GSSM, and Plenty volunteers.

A short history of the project:

Jorge Gonzalez, who lived with Plenty’s Guatemala volunteer crew as a teenager back in the late 70's, had talked to Plenty about wanting to help families who recycle and survive off the Guatemala City Dump, a job he himself had done for 7 years.

Jorge’s friend Padre Paulino from Iglesia Santa Maria (St. Mary’s Church), located across from the dump, knew of a small group of women from the church that also wanted to help the children of dump workers. After talking together, they organized themselves as the Grupo de Soya Santa Maria (GSSM) and developed a project plan with Plenty.

With the support of the church and help from Plenty technicians, GSSM members prepared a room in the Iglesia Santa Maria and installed bakery equipment to make enriched cookies for children targeted for assistance.

A refrigerator was purchased to store fresh soy milk at the project site for distribution with the baked goods.

The participating children were initially selected by GSSM members, who visited families door to door in two squatter settlements next to the dump.

The aim was to identify 300 children who could significantly benefit from additional nutritious foods, at no cost to their families.

Samples were passed out to families living in the neighborhood near Guatemala's dump to introduce the new soy based foods.

Production and distribution began in September 2010, and the children love it!

A line forms to receive soy milk and cookies.