In Guatemala City, there is a massive garbage dump that spans 35 acres.

In the dump lives a community of the poorest Guatemalans with nowhere else to go. Here, children learn to walk as they pick through trash for anything that can be recycled. The families – many from rural areas, once hopeful the city would offer better opportunities – live on the edges of the dump, foraging daily in a competitive and all-consuming search for trash that can be sold.

A world where life consists of a daily struggle to survive doesn’t have room – or the money – for children to go to school. A group of high school students from Cape Elizabeth, led by middle school Spanish teacher Susan Dana, want to help change that.

Under the leadership of the Yarmouth-based Safe Passage, Dana and a group of about 13 students will spend two weeks this summer in the Guatemalan dump teaching children anything from music to math. Dana, a teacher for 16 years, knows many of the current high school students who passed through her classroom and is looking forward to traveling with them.

“I just think community service is really important for the students,” said Dana.

For a number of years, Dana wanted to organize a trip to a Spanish-speaking country for her students. After she participated in a program that paired her class with a Peace Corps volunteer, the idea of a service trip started to take hold. For two years her students corresponded with the Peace Corp volunteer and organized school-supply drives to send to the students. Once the volunteer had finished her years of service, Dana began to think about Safe Passage.

“Then, lo and behold,” said Dana, “these two students started a Safe Passage club at the high school.”

The coincidence, said Dana, was too much to ignore, and the plan for a mission trip to the Central American Republic of Guatemala began.

Safe Passage was founded in 1999 by Maine resident Hanley Denning. In 1997, frustrated with her problems communicating with her Spanish-speaking students in class in the North Carolina school where she taught, she volunteered in Guatemala to improve her Spanish skills. Moved by the poverty she witnessed at the dump, Denning stayed for two years, eventually selling her computer and car and opened Safe Passage to 40 Guatemalan students.

Now, Safe Passage provides vocational skill training, nutrition education, sports, language lessons and a variety of other basic education needs to about 550 children.

“When it first started,” said Rachel Meyn of Safe Passage, “there was resistance from Guatemalan public schools. They told us that we were wasting our time with these children.”

Public schools in Guatemala, said Meyn, while technically free, make it impossible for poor students to attend by requiring a number of fees for things such as school supplies and uniforms. The attitude at first, said Meyn, was that the children of the families who work and live in the dump were beyond hope.

Six years later, she added, Safe Passage pays for its children to attend public school, serving as an after-school education reinforcement center. School in Guatemala is only a half day, said Meyn. Once the children are done with their Guatemalan school, they come to Safe Passage to keep learning.

Once at Safe Passage, they have a meal – often the only on they will eat that day – and find themselves under the watch of a social-services staff member, who makes sure everyone is attending school. Now there are also classes for some of the adults, said Meyn, though the emphasis remains on the children.

Often, said Meyn, high school groups like the one planned in Cape Elizabeth travel to Guatemala with Safe Passage to teach a skill. Recently, she added, students from Greeley High School in Cumberland taught the Safe Passage children lacrosse and left the equipment behind when they returned to Maine.

Though she isn’t sure what the group will teach, sophomore Katie Takach is looking forward to this summer’s trip. Takach, who began the Safe Passage high school club with her friend Caitlin Pomeroy, will be one of the student leaders on the trip.

Since the club began about a year ago, said Takach, she’s helped with a school-supply drive and other fundraising efforts that are donated to Safe Passage. After first hearing about Safe Passage from her mother, Takach heard Denning speak and decided to help by starting the club. Now, Takach helps lead about 20 of her fellow students, along with Pomeroy.

The organizing and fundraising was hard, said Takach, but knowing it was all for a great charity made the work worth it.

“It’s definitely fun,” added Takach. “It’s good that a bunch of people can get together each week that all share a passion and can work for a common cause.”

On Monday, Jan. 8, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. there will be an informational meeting for interested students and their parents at the Community Center building in Cape Elizabeth. The trip is actually through Community Services, not the high school, said Dana.

The benefits of the trip, said Dana, go far beyond the chance to practice Spanish skills outside of the classroom. She also hopes to bring the group closer together before the actual trip by having the students raise money in the remaining months. The trip planning, said Dana, is still in the early stages, but she intends to figure the final travel costs soon.

“I hope to have fundraisers once a month to help defray some of the travel costs,” said Dana. “For a trip like this we have to know each other fairly well – it’s going to be a very emotional trip.”

The proposed summer trip to Guatemala through Safe Passage is the topic of an informational meeting for interested students and their parents on Monday, Jan. 8, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Community Center building in Cape Elizabeth.

For more information on Safe Passages, log on to www.safepassages.org.

Safe Passage 1 Safe Passage teaches the children of the poor families who live off of recycling they find in the massive dump in Guatemala City. One of over 500 students who are able to go to school thanks to the Yarmouth-based Safe Passage.